A Heart of Stone
by Mr. Gallows
Summary: A fanfic about the Dislestia pairing from MLP:FiM.    My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all the characters in this story are all the property of Lauren Faust, Studio B, The HUB, and Hasbro.
1. Chapter 1

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 1**

It was a bright, sunny, summer morning. The birds were whistling loudly in the royal gardens, as if singing along to some melodic tune audible only to their ears. The beams of the mid-summer's sun shone through out all of Canterlot: through, the castle windows, through the royal gardens, through the local parks and residential neighborhoods, and even through the blinds of the young Princess Celestia.

Rubbing her eyes, she gave a short and quiet yawn and rose from her covered bed. It was going to be as plain a day as ever for her. Rise promptly at 9:00, morning hygiene, breakfast, and then her lessons with Athena, her magic tutor. Since she was still a very young filly, (well, by alicorn standards at least) she had challenged herself to get practice with her spells by using magic whenever and wherever the opportunities arose. Her morning routine seemed as good a place as any to start. As she slid into the tub, she ran a bath, scrubbed herself down with soap, and combed her fluffy pink mane, all with magic. "Not bad," she thought proudly, "Athena would be impressed."

After she had finished her routine, she began wondering around the spacious palace halls, looking for somepony to make her breakfast for her. She searched the kitchens, the foyer, the banquet hall, and even the bathrooms. She couldn't find a soul: no cooks, no servants, not even Athena. "That's weird." Celestia thought. "Everypony is usually up and about by now."

After scouring the entire palace, she had no other choice but to see her parents in their throne room, since they were almost always there. Always there either signing papers, kissing foals, creating a proclamation, or (in extremely rare instances) doling out punishments.

That is not to say that the king and queen were neglectful of their daughter. No, it was quite the opposite. They loved their little Tia with every fiber of their respective beings. They hired Athena, the wisest unicorn in Canterlot, to be her magic tutor. They made it a point to close down the royal court before sundown so that they could spend family time with her. They even gave her a special spell so that she could contact them in case of an emergency. Yes, Queen Solara and King Jupiter were always there for their little princess.

Today was different, however. When she reached the door to her parent's throne room, there was a note pinned up on it. It was from Athena.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I am sad to inform you that your father is away on confidential royal business and won't return for at least a few weeks. I am, however, overjoyed to tell you that your mother was taken into Canterlot General late last night to prepare for the baby's arrival! Just think of it Princess: in a few short days, you'll be a big sister to a newborn foal!

I am with your mother presently and as a result of the absences of both the king and queen, the palace servants have been given time off. Looks like you've finally gotten that vacation you've been waiting for, eh?

Your faithful tutor,

Athena

P.S. Here are a few spells that should help you with things like preparation of food, tidying up, etc.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have forgotten the single most important thing going on in Equestria for the last nine months? How could she have forgotten about the arrival of her replacement?

Despite Athena's insistence to the contrary, Celestia had been sure that her parents were looking to replace her with this new child. She knew that this "little bundle of joy" would be nothing but a bundle of trouble for her. She knew that her parents would stop loving her the moment this little foal arrived. He knew that for some unexplainable reason, everypony would love this new foal more than her, even though she had more to say and had been around FAR longer.

Celestia started walking and shook her head, as to get rid of the thought. "No, I will not let this little brat ruin my free time." After a few minutes, she managed to shake off the thoughts of her imminent problem, choosing to deal with it as it happened. By the time she had cleansed her thoughts of the foal, she had arrived at the kitchen, and she decided to make herself a nice breakfast.

Just as he began to sit down to her bowl of warm oatmeal (hey, she was a princess, not a five star chef!) She heard a sickening thud come from the courtyard below the kitchen window. Never being one for traditional royal etiquette, she threw open the window and flew down to the courtyard. She landed at the entrance to her parent's hedge maze: there was a thick cloud of smoke and dust emanating from the maze's center.

Something was going on in that maze, and she didn't have the time (or the patience) to navigate through it all. With every ounce of willpower she had in her, she looked down and fired a beam of light from her horn. The beam shot straight through the maze, cutting through the shrubbery like it wasn't even there. When she finally arrived at the center, she was shocked to find what she did: in the center of a smoking crater laid the body of the most terrifying creature she had ever laid eyes on.

The creature was an amalgam of all different types of creatures. It had the head of a pony, a griffon's taloned claw, a lion's paw, a snake's tail, a lizard's leg, a leg of a buffalo, and the horns of both a deer and a dragon. She stared at this monster for a very long time. What should she do about it? Anypony who could do anything was away.

Suddenly, the creature groaned: it was still alive. "OK, I definitely need to do something about this right now," Celestia thought. What was the most secure place in the castle? The kitchen? The throne room? Her parent's chambers? The Library! Yes, the palace library had a lock only the royal family could open! Yes, the library would make a fine makeshift prison for the beast.

It was far too big for her to levitate, so she was forced to drag the monster all the way back (3 floors) up to the library. By the time she had sealed the lock to the door, it was already past sundown. The princess was so exhausted that she fell asleep as soon as her head hit her pillow.


	2. Chapter 2

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 2**

When Celestia awoke the next day, she immediately tried to contact her father. Her messages went unanswered. Next, she tried Athena. After waiting for what seemed like hours, she finally got a response from her teacher:

_Dear Princess Celestia,_

_Your parents and I are very busy at the moment and I must ask that you stop sending us letters._

_Your faithful tutor, Athena_

_ P.S. Stop reading all of those old mythology books; the creature you told me about simply cannot exist._

Celestia was distraught, to say the very least. "Looks like I'll be on my own." Since she couldn't just abandon her parents' home with a monster running free in it, she began her march to the library. "Would it be awake by now? What if it's angry? What if it's stronger than me?" All of these questions and a hundred more flew through Celestia's head as she began her approach on the doors.

When she finally reached the door, she slowly lowered her horn and inserted it into the doors' lock. As she withdrew, the door gave forth a dull green glow. The large, steel lock trembled and eventually fell to the ground, leaving the massive doors wide open.

The library walls themselves were completely lined with books that covered every subject imaginable. From magic, to history, to sewing, to animal care, and even baking, the Canterlot library had it all. At the opposite end of the room, there were two large spiral staircases that led up to the second level. In the center of the first level lay a series of desks that ponies could use for their studies. It was here that Athena administered Celestia her lessons.

As she quietly snuck through the bookcases, Celestia began to grow unsteady. The creature was nowhere to be found. Finally, after a solid half-hour of scouring every last inch of the library, she heard a few books fall off of their shelves on the level above her. Cautiously, she flew up to the second level and grabbed a hold of the railing with her hooves, dangling there. "On the count of three, I'll pull myself up and give this monster everything I have! Nothing is going to scare Princess Celestia! One. Two. THREE!"

She pulled herself up onto the balcony, horn at the ready, only to find a few of her mother's old textbooks strewn about on the floor. The monster was gone. Maybe it had escaped through one of the windows. Hay, it could have evaporated into thin air for all she cared. All that mattered to her was that it was at last out of her mane. This fact alone was enough to elicit a deep sigh of relief from the young princess.

No sooner did she finish her moment of relief, however, did she hear a cocky, sarcastic voice call from behind her, "Well, that was quite the close call!" She was paralyzed with fear. The voice spoke again, this time slightly more annoyed. "You can turn around, Princess." She did as the voice said. There, lounging luxuriously on the railing was the creature.

"AHHHHHHHHH!" shrieked Celestia.

"EEEEEEEEKKKKK!" screamed the creature, trying to mock her. She continued her screams of terror until the monster laid his talon on her lips, as to shush her up. "That's enough of that Celestia, thank you very much."

"H-h-how do you know my name?" She asked it with a tone somewhere between confusion and unimaginable fright. The creature spun her around and directed her eyes toward the sign above her. It read "The Princess Celestia Wing," and had an image of her cutie mark on it. Celestia blushed with embarrassment.

"What are you?" she asked, this time with a little less fear in her voice. The creature feigned shock.

"What am I? _What _am I? I was expecting a pony who had her own library wing would also have a passable understanding of grammar! I am a _who_, not a what. My name is Discord, draconequus, and-."

"Grammar lector too, apparently," said Celestia. She was none too thrilled about being scolded by this bizarre thing in front of her (especially since she had hoped to avoid learning until Athena returned.)

"Hmph. Well, your incorrectness aside, I'm so glad you're finally awake. After I finished reading, things got real boring around here." As he said this, all of Celestia's school books levitated up to their faces and opened up. As the tomes rotated around them, Celestia noticed that even the pages of books she hadn't gotten to yet were wrinkled, slightly torn (as if by talons), and generally gave off a worn appearance.

"You-you read all of these in one night?" Celestia said in disbelief.

"I know! Such light reading. But I'm used to it, I guess. Not much to do besides read where I come from. Although I must admit this teleportation thing-." He snapped and vanished in a flash of light. "-is really fun!" he cried from one of the desks below.

Celestia flew down to him. "So….you don't want to eat me?"

"Eat you? Why would I ever want to do something like that when I have a fresh plate of gems right here?"

"I don't see any-,"she bit her tongue. There, on the desk in front of them, appeared a large dish of blue sapphires.

Discord dug right in. "Fu, wan sum of dis?" he asked her with a full mouth.

She looked at the half-finished plate of azure rock. "Discord, these would cut into my mouth. A princess only eats the finest delicacies. Like roses, daisies, and tulips."

Discord swallowed the last of his gems with a satisfied grin. "Why didn't you just say so?" And with a snap of his fingers, the library carpet began to grow the greenest grass Celestia had ever seen, greener even than the royal gardens. From this grass, sprouted gigantic bushes of roses, daisies, tulips, daffodils, sunflowers, and any flower the princess could've imagined. This was far beyond anything Athena had ever taught her.

Since she hadn't eaten for over 24 hours, Celestia hungrily devoured the bouquets, keeping in mind her royal manners, of course. "Maybe he isn't so bad," she thought, "Nothing that makes things like this happen could possibly be bad!"

When she finally looked up, she saw Discord levitating above her. "So, what is it that you ponies do for fun around here?"

She thought for a moment, and then it hit her. "Well, the castle is going to be empty so there won't be much to do here. But we could go outside and spend a day in Canterlot!"

Discord smiled, bowed and directed Celestia to the door. "After you, Tia." And with that, Celestia led the draconequus out of the library.


	3. Chapter 3

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 3**

The clouds settled in on Canterlot as the pair walked though the Royal District of the city. Discord, who would stick out like a sore horn in the bustling city streets, took on the form of Celestia's breastplate,and was wrapped around her neck. She couldn't take her eyes off of his face, which was vaguely visible in the jewel. He seemed to be hurriedly scanning the crowd of unicorns, almost as if he were looking for something.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked him.

He looked up at her. "I don't suppose you've seen a grey mare with a golden apple cutie mark recently, have you?" She told him that she was rarely allowed time to leave the castle and had no clue whether such a pony even lived in Canterlot. And with that Discord returned to his normal self.

As they walked along the road, the ponies that lined the streets all bowed their heads to the ground as Celestia walked by them. She had never felt comfortable letting everypony worship her like she was some sort of deity. It made her feel like her presence was a bother to them all and that everypony was scrutinizing her heavily. Besides, she was still only a princess, not yet the queen. But still, her parents always taught her that accepting their reverence was the polite and "princess-y" thing to do, so she did it.

Discord looked up at her with disdain. "Is this how you ponies act all the time?"

"No, just…..just when I'm around," she said with a good deal of embarrassment. She felt the breastplate vanish from her neck and she looked up to see Discord leaning on the wall of a nearby alleyway.

"So you mean to say that everypony treats you like you're the best thing since sliced bread? Even your friends?"

"No!" she cried indignantly, even though she knew it was true. Everypony DID treat her like a goddess. And what's more, between her studies with Athena and spending time with her parents, she never really had any friends of her own.

Discord raised his hands in defense. "Hey, hey! I was only asking a simple question. No need to shout. But regardless Canterlot is so much more boring than I imagined it….." He scratched his head for a minute, before his face lit up with the look somepony would get if they just came up with a brilliant idea. He looked at her and snapped his fingers, replacing her breastplate. He put his arm around her and pointed to the park across the street from them. "You walk around the city for the day doing…..whatever it is that you princesses do. I'll meet you under that old willow tree in a few hours." With this, he turned his back on Celestia and began to walk away.

"Where will you be?" she asked worriedly. She didn't want Discord running around causing mayhem all day.

He turned around and looked at her. "Following you, of course!" He snapped and he vanished in the typical "flash of light" fashion.

Celestia looked around for a few minutes, hoping to find Discord hiding around a dark corner, in a trash bin, or on a low rooftop, but to no avail. After a few minutes of this fruitless search, she grew bored and started to wander aimlessly around the city.

When she arrived in the Garment District, she was surprised to see almost nopony there. The only one who was there, in fact, a lone lavender unicorn stallion. He was sitting on a bench, contently enjoying the sleepy afternoon without a care in Equestria. That is, until she tapped him on the back.

"Excuse me, where is-"she was cut off immediately. The stallion nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard her voice and immediately brought himself to attention.

"My liege!" he cried as he threw his head to the ground. "Forgive my extreme foolishness in your presence! Is there any way at all in which I could assist you, Princess?"

"Yes, there is. Stop bowing and look me in the eye," she said commandingly. "I swear, you ponies need to calm-"she trailed off. The stallion still had not raised his head. When she looked down, she saw the reason: his horn was stuck in the ground. It wasn't just stuck in the surface either. It appeared that the ground had literally opened up and swallowed the poor stallion's horn. As she magically removed the unfortunate unicorn from his grassy prison, Celestia could hear a faint snickering in the distance.

After she sent to purple unicorn on his way, Celestia wandered into a foal's play park. She watched three little fillies play on the swings, laughing all the while. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. Celestia envied them.

While she was lost in thought, one of the fillies flew off of her swing and high up into the air. Luckily for her, she was a pegasus, and her wings helped her to stick her landing. After the three friends moved on, Celestia went closer to investigate. The pegasus's swing chains had snapped: after they mysteriously turned to licorice. The laughter in the distance grew louder.

As the day drew to a close, Celestia made her way back to the tree Discord mentioned earlier. He was nowhere to be found. What she did find, however, was a massive crowd of ponies screaming and running from rain clouds: pink rain clouds. Before she could fly up to them and get a better look, the pink blobs let loose a flood of chocolate milk.

Discord appeared on a branch above her, laughing like a madman. "Did you see that? Oh, that was probably the funniest thing I've seen in months!"

Celestia was not amused. "That wasn't funny Discord! Somepony could've gotten hurt today!"

He jumped down from the branch. "Yes, but they didn't! I took special care to make sure of it."

Celestia continued her scowl.

"Alright fine. Look me in the eyes and tell me that today wasn't even a bit funny."

She stared down the draconequus, looking deeply into his crimson eyes with the utmost austerity. Almost immediately though, his pupils transformed into smiling faces, that in turn, grew legs, arms, and a top hat, and begin to dance a jig against the backdrop of his yellow irises.

After that Celestia just couldn't deny it any longer: that was the most fun Canterlot had ever been. It was all harmless fun, and all of it made her and Discord laugh. So she did. They both did. They laughed and laughed, until they simply couldn't laugh any longer.

Discord, still fighting off the last of his giggles, reached up into the leaves of the tree. "I think you're going to like this one Celestia…." He pulled is fist down and in it, he clutched a pile of green leaves.

She had no clue what to say, other than "Ummmmm…That's nice."

"Oh, you haven't even seen the best part of it yet, Tia." He clenched his fist, and a brilliant light radiated from it. When he opened his paw up, the leaves were gone, and in their place, was a small round green creature, with bright blue eyes, four wings, and four tiny legs. Celestia immediately fawned over this strange new creature.

"I call it a parasprite. You like?"

"This creature is adorable!" she cried happily.

Discord smiled widely. "I'll take that as a yes." The parasprite flew off into the night, much to the disappointment of Celestia. He put his arm around her as to console her. "Don't worry. You'll be seeing more of them. Really, really soon. Until then, how about some chocolate milk and cotton candy?" He snapped and a pink cloud appeared over their heads, and a few seconds afterwards it burst in a rain of chocolate dairy drink.

"My favorite!" Celestia exclaimed. "Let's go home." And they did, catching the chocolate rain in their mouths all the way.


	4. Chapter 4

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 4**

"She is the most precious little thing!" fawned Discord as he picked up the dark blue foal.

Celestia rolled her eyes. "Yeah. 'Precious' is the word you're looking for," she mumbled. It had been exactly two months since she and Discord had first met, and life had since returned to normal. Well, as close as it could ever get to normal with the little brat around. Every day she atte4nded her morning lessons with Athena, went out to the hedge maze to play with Discord, as it had become his home since her parents returned, and then hurriedly rushed back to the castle to spend her quality time with the king and queen.

However, their QT (as her father liked to call it) had been growing shorter and shorter in the recent days. Just as they would start settling in to talk, the baby would start to cry, and just like that they would be gone. Vanished in a blur of black and yellow to attend the infant's needs, as if they, the king and queen of all the land, were **her** personal slaves! They were always feeding her, burping her, putting her to sleep, or some other silly thing. They even took it into their own hooves to complete her early education (something they had never done for Celestia, by the way.) And when they couldn't take care of the foal due to business? They sent Celestia to the nursery to do whatever the "little princess" needed.

As if the fact that she loathed the foal wasn't enough, she hated the nursery even more. It used to be the castle star observatory, and its ceiling was made completely up of glass, allowing the light of the stars and moon shine in during the night. That was the only light that ever got in, however. The foal didn't like a lot of light, so they never had any lights turned on, day or night. The walls of the circular room were completely lined with images of playful looking Ursa Majors and Minors that, despite their mirthful expressions, still made Celestia uncomfortable.

Discord continued to hug the little filly as you might hug a beloved stuffed doll you had from birth. "Does she have a name yet?"

Celestia rolled her eyes yet again and apathetically groaned out, "Luna."

He giggled like a schoolfilly before gently placing her down in her crib. "Well then! Have I got a supwise for you wittle Woona! Yes I do! Yes I do!" As he continued to entertain Luna with his baby talk, he tore an image of a newborn Ursa Minor clean off the wall (He replaced it with another before Celestia could berate him for it) Luna looked on in wide eyed fascination. He crushed the paper in between his hands, and when he parted them, it was gone: It was replaced with a large, stuffed Ursa Minor teddy bear.

The tiny filly clapped her hooves together in joy and jumped up and down as Discord lowered the bear into her crib. It was a comical sight, since the doll was still significantly bigger than her. That fact didn't stop her from hugging it, though. Celestia, despite having known Discord for quite some time by this point, was still consistently amused by his antics, and tried her best to hide a smile and look angry. She failed, however, and began to head for the door, but Discord was already blocking her way.

"Oh, why the long face, sourpuss?" he asked, lifting her chin up.

She donned a face of sarcastic surprise. "Oh I'm sorry, Dizzy. I thought you were talking to Luna. Seems to be the only thing anypony is interested in nowadays anyhow…."

Discord folded his arms and jovially glared at her. "Tia. You know you'll always be my number one, don't you?"

She hesitated, by eventually nodded.

He grinned. "Good, good. Now, as for why it seems everypony loves Luna so much, we all just want to make sure she's alright. She's still just a baby, after all, and she can't do anything for herself. She has a looooooong life ahead of her, and we just want to make sure that she starts it on the right hoof. Does that make any sense to you?"

She nodded again.

"Your parents, although I've never met them, love you very much, Tia. And Luna's arrival hasn't changed a thing about it. So can you accept her now? After all, if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that she'll be with you forever."

She turned her head to look back. By now, the sun had set, and the brilliant light of the moon was shining down on the now sleeping Luna, who was curled up in a ball next to her newfound toy. Celestia knew that everything Discord had said had been true. She walked over to her, stuck her head into the crib, and kissed her little sister lightly on the forehead. When she turned back around to talk to Discord again, he was gone.

She awoke the next morning as happy as a clam. Her parents had taken Luna to get her magic levels assessed, so she was free to play with Discord all day long. She smiled at the thought of spending a day with him again, just like when they first met. Halfway through her usual routine, it dawned on her that she still had to go to her lessons. Her hope for an entire day with her friend was crushed.

When she went to walk through her bedroom door, she discovered a poorly written note on it. It appeared to be from Athena, but the penmanship was so awful she couldn't tell. It read:

_Deer Prinses Selestia,_

_Tooday I woke up with a buket of bloo flowrs dumped all over meee. When i tryed to uuse my magik, my horn din't work rite, and now i 4got all what I used too no. This iz wierd cuz i usual have such smartness. No classes 2day;_

_ Athena._

"That's kind of sad," Celestia thought out loud. "I'll have to send her a get well card. She walked over to her desk to write a note to herself, only to find that there was nothing on the desk at all. Nothing, barring one solitary note in the center of it. The sheet read:

_My little pony, it's your friend, Discord;_

_We're playing a game so we won't get bored. (Flip)_

She followed the instruction and flipped the paper to its opposite side.

_With this sheet of paper, our game has begun;_

_And it'll continue through the setting of the sun. (Flip)_

She was puzzled by the instruction, but nevertheless flipped the sheet over again: the text written on it had changed.

_Even though it is the first place you would look;_

_Why don't you try picking up a book?_

"I hate it when he does this," she thought. "He can't speak like everypony else, he's got to use these silly riddles all the time." She knew immediately he meant for her to visit the library, so after a very quick breakfast, she was off.

It was a short half hour before she found Discord's next clue hidden in a book right under the sign that read "The Princess Celestia Wing."

_Oh joy! You've found my clue!_

_And I had thought that I was smarter than you._

_But it's not just yet that I should gloat;_

_You'll find your next clue on a good note._

"Notebook, obviously," she thought. She flew off the balcony and landed in the middle of two ponies studying at their two oak desks. She frantically tore through their papers looking for Discord's next riddle. She ripped out every page in the confused ponies notebooks until only the covers remained. She blushed when she realized there was no clue.

"Heh, heh. Sorry for that," she said to the two of them, who, despite their obvious anger, simply made a poor attempt at a grin and bent over to pick up their papers that lay scattered upon the library floor. Celestia walked away from the pair disheartened, and proceeded to sulk around the castle halls with a bruised ego.

As she brooded, she noticed that she had begun to tap her hooves to a beat. There was a song playing somewhere in the castle that was the most pleasant song she had ever heard in her life. She chased the sweet melody into room after room until she arrived at its source: a four string quartet playing on its own. The cello, viola, and the two violins were all floating mystically in the air, surrounded by a dull gray glow, playing themselves. Now she was transfixed both by the melody, **and **the eerie peculiarity of the sight. After a while of the ethereal sounds of the instruments, the cello suddenly stopped playing and belched (literally) out another one of Discord's clues.

_It seems to me that you've settled the score;_

_Even though there's only but one clue more._

_Twists and turns of my little plan;_

_Find the next clue back where we began._

"Back where we began? What could that mean?" she pondered. He obviously meant the start of their friendship, but he already had her go to the library. Could he have meant something else? What if he had- her train of thought was interrupted. It happened quickly but all she heard was Discord's sigh, a snap, and a large explosion outside. She looked out of the window and another mushroom cloud formed at the center of the hedge maze.

She flew out to the source of the blast, and in the center of a large, blackened crater, she found a partially singed note.

_This seem familiar? It probably should;_

_I gave you all the help I possibly could._

_Now where can you find this draconequus pup?_

_All you have to do is simply look up._

She did. She looked up to the left: nothing. She looked up to the right, at the mountain that Canterlot is built off of, and she saw what he was talking about: towards the top of the mountain, on a rocky ledge, emanated a warm glow of a campfire.

She flew up to find Discord roasting hotdogs on the open flame. Beneath him lay a checkerboard picnic cloth. "You finally made it I see. I hope the riddles weren't too hard for you, Tia."

She smiled. "Not a chance, Dizzy. I solved them all with time to spare." It was odd, she usually disliked his riddles, but this time was pretty fun.

Discord chuckled. "Only because I wanted you to. Here, have a seat," he snapped his fingers together and a large picnic basket filled to the brim with gemstones and flowers appeared in front of them. "I've prepared dinner."

They ate in relative silence which Celestia thought was strange, especially for Discord. Although more than a few times, he looked like he wanted to say something to her, but he quickly closed his mouth and pretended like nothing happened. As the sun started to set, she confronted him about it. "Dizzy? Do you have something you want to tell me?" she asked him gently.

He sighed and stared at the ground for a few minutes, apparently trying to gather his words. He finally looked up at her and said, "Have you ever wondered why you found me in a crater that day Tia? Have you ever wondered why there is no mentioned of other draconequus in any of your books? Have you ever wondered where I came from?"

She thought about it for a moment. No, she really hadn't. Was she curious? Yes, now that he brought it up. She felt kind of selfish for not ever questioning Discord about himself.

"Well, I guess I should start off with my parents. My mother is a beautiful unicorn mare. Golden mane, grey coat, and a magnificent golden apple for a cutie mark. Eris, is her name, and let me tell you one thing, she's a saint. When I asked her why I looked so different than everybody else she would always respond to me 'Because honey, you're mommy's little miracle.' My father, on the other hand, is an entirely different story."

"He is a very young crimson dragon named Cronus. He is the ruler of a large dragon settlement out west, far past Stalliongrad. And he couldn't be more different from my mother. He is cruel, loud, crude, arrogant, and all too often has many of his friends (who are just as bad as him) over the cave to 'discuss business.' Sometimes, I wonder how they ever even got married. I once asked him why I looked different than all the other hatchlings. Do you know what his response was? He told me, 'Because you're mother and I were two stupid young kids who broke the natural order of things, and we got stuck with….whatever you are.' Needless to say, I spent most of my time with my mother."

Celestia blurted out interrupting him, "But what about the other dragon hatchlings? What did they think of you?"

He looked at her solemnly. "Didn't you hear me? My father was ashamed of me. Do you really expect for him, the ruler of a sizeable colony of dragons, to let other dragons know that I'm his son? He'd be a laughing stalk. I spent most of my time growing up in my room reading whatever I could get my hands on. Although I doubt I'd ever have the chance to make many friends if I could've gone out. My father rules his colony with an iron talon, and has every single dragon in the colony under a strict time regiment. Wake up, clean your scales, eat your gemstones, go to school and or work, come home, eat sleep, and then repeat. No time for anything but his rules. It's all so boring! It's all so organized! It's all too orderly!"

As he described the organized day-to-day life at the colony, Celestia noticed something strange happen to her friend. His eyes began twitching, his voice grew erratically loud, and his fists clenched. He had to take a moment to calm himself down.

"But there was always my mother to make things bearable. That is, until one day about three months ago. On that morning, I woke up, and she was gone. Vanished, poof, sayonara, arrivederci, gone. I asked my father where she had gone and he told me that she said she was tired of living there and ran away from them. I just wasn't going to stay behind while my mother enjoyed her freedom, so I left. I flew and I flew for days on end, looking for her. I tried all the major unicorn cities, with nothing to show for my efforts. Eventually, the only place I had left to search was Canterlot. I flew for days to reach your city, but one morning, I couldn't keep going, and out of sheer exhaustion, I fell. Right into your hedge maze. I just like it here so much I decided not to leave. Don't you see Tia? Other than my mother, you're my only friend in the world."

He finished his story. Celestia was shell-shocked. She didn't know what to do except but to hug him. So she did. They hugged tightly and she whispered into his ear, "We'll find her, Dizzy. I promise." He directed her head out towards the night sky: it was ablaze with comets. They were flying every which way, almost colliding with each other and the stars themselves. As the two friends watched the shower, she again spoke to him. "Dizzy?"

"Yeah, Tia?"

"You're my only friend too."

"Dizzy?"

"Yes, Tia?"

"Will we be friends forever?"

He hesitated. "Sure we will, Tia. Sure we will."


	5. Chapter 5

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 5**

She woke up early the next morning, alone, still on the mountainside. She could tell from the moment she opened her eyes that the place had changed. The ledge's warm, welcoming, and bright ambiance of the night before had given way to cold stone, dark cliffs, and foreboding, thick fog that stretched all around the mountain.

Fearing that her parents might notice her absence, she hurried down the mountainside. Hurried, of course meaning slowly trekking though the ridiculously thick fog so as to not fly into anything. She had seen fog like this before, but something about it was off. As she progressed down the side of the cliffs, it became blacker, heavier, almost like smoke.

When she at last reached the ground, the fog had been entirely replaced by the black veil. Immediately thinking that it was one of Discord's pranks, she called out to him playfully.

"Dizzy! What game are we playing now?"

She received no response. She tried again, this time more cautiously.

"Dizzy? Are you there?"

She felt the ground trembling. As the tremors grew closer to her, she heard a low growl from behind the smog. She was panicking now.

"Discord!" she said pseudo- sternly, "You stop this right now! This isn't funny anymore!"

The growling and the tremors grew ever closer.

"Discord! Please!"

The terror behind the smoke was nearly on top of her. She was sobbing by now.

"I'm scared!"

The tremors stopped. For this she was thankful, but only for a moment. As soon as the ground had ceased its quivering, a deep and booming voice came forth from behind the smoke.

"Scared? Good, good. You should be!" At these words, a massive red tail slammed onto the ground next to her. The tail swung all around the courtyard, clearing the air and finally revealing the terror: before her stood a colossal, blood red dragon. His sharp, black spines shimmered fearsomely in the morning sun, before the smoke from his nostrils blocked it out again. Celestia knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the monstrosity standing before her was Discord's father.

She stood there dumbfounded, staring at him. Cronus wasted little time. He flicked his wrists and dagger-like claws shot from his fingertips. He swung them straight down at her. She was paralyzed with fear: No flying or simple alicorn magic could save her now. This was it. She was done for. She closed her eyes tightly and waited for it to end.

Thud.

After opening one eye slowly, she saw someone she was never so happy to see in her life: Discord had intervened, creating a large wooden board between Cronus' claw and her. Cronus, his claws still stuck in the wood, was flabbergasted.

"Since when can the little abomination do magic?" he bellowed in his surprise. Discord shyly explained himself to his father, telling him the story of how he had read Celestia's school books to learn his magic and that he and Celestia had become friends. After Discord had finished, Cronus stroked his chin, seemingly reevaluating the situation.

"Is there any limit to what you can do with those powers?" he asked his son.

Discord looked all around, trying to avoid the question for as long as he could. At last, he finally declared whilst looking at the ground, "No, not to my knowledge."

Before that day, Celestia had no concept of what true malice looked like. But as soon as she looked into Cronus' eyes, she could see it: vicious, gleeful, evil the likes of which she would never see again. Whatever he had planned for Discord, it was far from good. The dragon guided her friend to the opposite end of the courtyard, just out of earshot. Cronus had to lay himself on the ground to speak quietly and closely to his son.

After a few moments, Discord sulked back over to her. The usual joyful look on his face was vanished; replaced with grave stoicism. He walked straight up at her and told her the honest truth.

"Tia, I have to go away for a while."

"How long, Dizzy?" she asked him, already knowing the answer in the back of her mind

He looked down at the grass once again. "Awhile," he repeated quietly.

"I'm not going to see you again, am I?" she asked, beginning to choke up.

"Well….no, I don't think so."

Celestia's heart sank. She was going to lose her only friend in the world and there wasn't a thing she could do about it. She wanted to break down and cry right then and there, but she didn't want to make it harder on Discord. All she could do was bow her head in sorrow.

"Aw, don't feel that way," he said as he lifted up her chin. "As long as you keep yourself happy and laughing, I'll be there. These two months have been the best of my life. Thank you for giving them to me, Tia. Good bye." He hugged her intensely. She didn't want him to let go, but let him walk away when he eventually did. Celestia watched on as Discord got on his father's back, and flew out into the Western skyline.

For the next few weeks, she lived her life like a ghost. She ate and slept, yes, but beyond that, she just existed. She lost interest in all that she once enjoyed, for the void that Discord left in her heart was too big. Her parents had no clue what was wrong with her, for when they asked her, she put on a happy façade and made it seem like nothing was wrong.

The only thing she did was take care of Luna. She felt that she needed to do what Discord had told her and look after her, keep her safe, and provide her with anything she needed.

One day, almost six months after Discord had left her, she woke to chaos in the castle. Ponies were running around from room to room carrying food with them. Following close behind each of them, was a cloud of multicolored dust whizzed like a sandstorm. When the rainbow dust cloud caught up with them, it decimated whatever food they were carrying.

She walked into town to find more of the same chaos, only on a larger scale. Her parents, struggling to find a way to combat the mysterious clouds while at the same time controlling the masses, were spread too thin even for them. Since their days of rule began long ago after the founding of Equestria, they had never seen such madness. The flags which their images adorned were being ripped all around, which only served to discourage them even more. Celestia wandered through the madness until she reached the center of the town. When she took her last step, the dust clouds stopped, and everypony could see what they really were: small, round creatures with big eyes and four wings: Discord's parasprites. They all looked at Celestia. She looked back. Minutes passed and still the standstill continued.

Suddenly, the parasprites retreated from Canterlot, flying straight up at the sun. They all massed in a gigantic ball, blocking out the sun. Then, they formed themselves to be an exact replica of Celestia's cutie mark. The absolute precision and speed with which they assimilated themselves assured Celestia of one thing: they had been trained by somebody to do that.

Ponies all around her came out of their hiding places once they knew for sure the danger was gone. Celestia stood there, in the center of the town, with a smile on her face that she hadn't had for a long time. Any time after that, when she was questioned about why she smiled during such a chaotic situation, she responded with, "Because I knew then he was safe."


	6. Chapter 6

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 6**

Cronus flew for days at a time. Almost never stopping for food, drink or rest, he seemed to be propelled by some unfathomable mixture of glee and newfound megalomania. Discord hardly noticed. He spent his days during this journey dreaming woefully about his lost friend. The wind, the rain, the snow, he was so entrenched in his thoughts he couldn't feel any of them.

In fact, the first thing he felt after he departed from Canterlot was his father's cold and scaly hand grasping at his tail. "Let's go, abomination!" he shouted as he flung Discord into the wall of a familiar cave. Cronus laughed as Discord slowly slid down the wall and hit the ground. The cave itself wasn't anything too special. It was standard fare for a dragon, with a few extra perks for the ruler of a colony. It was a cliff side cave that had a colossal main chamber, filled with mountains upon mountains of gold, silver, gemstones, and other riches that the dragon had amassed with his natural greed. In the center of the chamber, there were massive stalagmites that doubled as a table and chairs for Cronus and his "associates."

Cronus paced the floor of the cave, eyeballing Discord. His footsteps shook the ground as if they were miniature earthquakes. "Now," boomed the crimson dragon, "recite for me the three new rules we have in this household."

Discord, exhaling a sigh of sorrow, resigned himself to an eternity in the colony, living under his father's rule. "Always obey Cronus. His word is law."

"Good," Cronus hissed. "Rule number two?"

"No magic unless otherwise instructed by Cronus."

"Number three?" he demanded with a toothy smirk. Discord stared at his father indignantly. He couldn't say it. He wouldn't say it, lest the terrible image erupt in his mind again, as it had when Cronus first told him the rule back in the garden.

Cronus grew visibly impatient. Not wanting his fun to be ruined by his son's stubbornness, he grabbed Discord's lower jaw and moved it up and down to synch up with what he was saying. "If I try to escape, try to rebel, or fail to comply with rules one or two, the result will be the immediate and total decimation of everypony in Equestria, starting with my little princess friend."

His appetite for sadism was whetted, for the moment at least. He sent Discord to his tiny chamber for the night. As he shrank away from his father, Discord could hear the mocking voice coming from behind, "Don't look so glum! I have a big day planned for tomorrow! Get lots of sleep!" He shuddered at the thought of doing anything his father regarded as "fun."

He slunk into his room, his only sanctuary from Cronus. It could barely hold him before, never mind when his mother had to go in with him because Cronus was busy. His mother! He kicked himself for forgetting about her. The whole point of his journey, the reason he met his best friend, the only being who made life bearable for so long. And after everything that had happened in the last few months he was still at square one: no clues and trapped with his father.

He eschewed his usual pile of gems that he had slept on before, and made his way to his mother's old canopy bed that lied in the center of the room. He flung himself down upon it and let his thoughts race through his mind until their sheer intensity made him pass out from exhaustion.

He woke up the next morning with a sharp pain poking him in the ribs. When n he rubbed his eyes open, he saw Cronus' massive ebony claw poking through the crevice, beckoning him to wake up. He lazily rolled out of bed, walked out of the room, and climbed onto his father's back.

While flying through the early morning darkness and fog, Discord looked down into the colony, which essentially consisted of two mountain ranges separated by a deep chasm. Cronus and his associates lived in the spacious caves of the tallest mountains. Across the valley, however, lay the homes of the other dragons, whose caves more than often couldn't hold their families. Although he hadn't thought about it much before, but he started to wonder just how right this system was. Before, he had assumed that this was the norm: the powerful should just walk over those with little. But after his time with Celestia, he saw that while the Canterlot Royal Family enjoyed more privileges than everypony else, they could still support themselves adequately.

His train of thought was interrupted by his father's hissing. "New has reached my ears that there are some serfs trying to usurp me. They supposedly meet in one of the deeper caves in the early mornings."

"I'm still not seeing why it is you need me here," Discord said, despite the fact that he already suspected what his father was about to make him do.

"You have unlimited magic, correct?" the dragon snapped at him.

"Yes," Discord stuttered out timidly.

Cronus chuckled. "Now I need you to use it. Ah! Here we are!" He landed outside of the cave as silently as a cloud would if it touched the earth. Then they made their dark descent into the cave.

Discord had experience total silence before; his night in the Canterlot library, his time in the hedge maze before Tia came to see him, and his many days spent in solitude before his mother disappeared. But this, this was something different entirely. He knew that whatever he was about to do wouldn't be pretty. That it was going to change him forever. He knew that he was about to take a life.

As they went further and further into the black, he could start to make out voices in the distance. Eventually, the darkness melted away, fought off by warm torchlights. Before them stood three very frightened dragons. He couldn't exactly discern all of their features, but of two things he was certain: they were all significantly smaller than Cronus, but still larger than himself, and that they were blue, green, and yellow in color. They flung themselves down in front of Cronus, almost kissing his feet. All Discord could feel was pity.

"M-m-my liege," stammered the blue dragon. "What brings you hear at this hour?" Discord could see the terror building up in every fiber of this poor creature's being: through his voice, his eyes, his trembling tail, and even the scales on the back of his head seemed to stand upright.

Cronus sneered at the pitiable trio. "Get up." All three obeyed, and flew to their feet faster than Discord thought was possible. "You know why I'm here, Fang. You all do."

The three dragons all exchanged looks. "You intend to kill us then?" Fang gulped out.

Cronus feigned shock. "ME? Never!" He plucked Discord from his shoulder and placed him on the floor. "Him, on the other claw…."

Discord was fairly certain that the dragons were recoiling at the sight of him, but he couldn't be sure. All he was able to do was listen in wide eyed terror as Cronus whispered the most horrible, repulsive, and stomach churning orders into his ear. When he was finished giving his despicable commands, all he had to say was, "Oh by the way, remember rule number 3…" Discord pictured the outcome of the punishment Cronus told him to carry out, but it paled in comparison to the image of what would happen should he refuse to do it.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and snapped his fingers. The screams he heard were the things nightmares were made of.

When he opened his eyes, Fang was left in a deep crater and the green and yellow dragons were gone, for the most part anyway. Bloody bits and pieces of them remained scattered across the room. Fang was shell-shocked at the sudden and total destruction of his two comrades, and was rocking back and forth in a fetal position.

In the hours that followed, two things happened. The first was the "trial" and execution of Fang for treason. Cronus took him to the cliff outside his cave, which also doubled as a public scaffold due to its immense height. There, he labeled Fang as a traitor in front of the entire colony. This was followed by Fang's confession, which was barely even a sentence, as he was still in shock. Finally, he received Cronus' punishment for traitors: He pulled Fang's wings off and pushed him off the side of the mountain.

The second thing was Cronus revelation of Discord. Cronus presented him to the colony as "his new secret weapon," and threatened to "use" him against any other rabble-rousers. Discord didn't like the idea of becoming a weapon at his tyrant father's disposal, but he yielded in the best interest of keeping Celestia safe.

This was the order of things for the next one hundred years. Discord was, as before, kept away in his room. Beyond squashing the occasional rebellion (which was **always** ended violently, as per Cronus' will) he simply went through the motions of life, disgusted by what he had become: a tool for his father to continue his tyranny. Looking back, he wouldn't be able to answer why he didn't rebel against him sooner than he did. Maybe it was due to fear, fear that if he failed he would act upon rule three and attack Canterlot. Or maybe it was in part to an innate respect for authority he had when he was young. No matter what it was that stopped him from acting on his dislike for his father, it all came to a head one day when he overheard Cronus talking to his supporters.

Cronus' confidants, as Discord grew to learn, weren't partners, but yes dragons. He eavesdropped on many a conversation they had, and they were so spineless, he would have been amazed if there was a full vertebra between all. There was Dagger, who appeared to be the closest thing there was to a second-in-command in the group. Then you had Inferno. He was so hot-headed (no pun intended) Discord could have roasted marshmallows over his forehead. One of their names Discord never actually knew, and only learned his nickname: Smokey. The reason for this name, he could never tell.

One day, after reading through the last book that he had in his limited possession, he decided to listen in on one of their talks, which in all truth, was always about one of three things: their women, their recent killings, and maintaining control. He usually tuned out the boring parts of conversation until he heard something particularly juicy, like something about Canterlot or the ponies living in Equestria. This was one such time that the conversation turned to him and his time with Celestia.

"So where did you say you found that one, Cronus?" said Inferno in between bout of stuffing his face with gems. "Looks like a hydra stepped on it and rolled it in manticore dung."

"I've told you all this story before. I found him one day talking to a pony," Cronus said, slightly annoyed, but still very merry.

"Oh and we all know how much Cronus _loves_ ponies, eh fellas?" laughed Smokey. Discord clenched his fists: he knew who they were talking about.

"Gentledragons, please. I remember her. Eris was her name right? Looked beautiful," said Inferno. "Not beautiful enough to cross nature like Cronus did, but in her own way." The other two weren't smart enough to get this jab at Cronus, but Inferno and Dagger still snickered to themselves. Discord heard a loud bang against the cave wall.

"I'll have all of you know that I hated that little nuisance everyday she was out here. I was a young kid you got in too far over his head. Besides, we all knew how preachy and obnoxious she was all the time, right?" he could hear a few grunts of approval from the underlings. "So one day, while she was sleeping, I popped her in my mouth, and swallowed her who-" Discord didn't wait for him to even finish the sentence.

"YOU DID WHAT?" He screamed as he tore the door to his room off its hinges. He could barely think straight he was so furious. It all made so much sense. Cronus took away everything that was ever good in his life: his mother, Celestia, and his freedom. He was done with it.

Cronus told his lackeys that he needed to cut his losses. They all began to breathe their fire at him. Discord, blinking easily through their flames, made his way onto Infernos' head. He clutched his spikes and began to veer him in all directions, as if he were at the world's most dangerous rodeo. Dagger, who was getting caught up in the mayhem, continued to cast fire at Discord, despite the fact it was burning Inferno more than anything. Inferno screamed, and ran in all directions, knocking up against the walls of the cave. The ceiling began to shake: the opening to the cave was collapsing.

He blinked off of Inferno's head and out of the cave. He could still see in as the rocks fell, blocking the entrance: Dagger was trying to put out the fire on Inferno, and Smokey was in the corner with copious amounts of thick black smoke billowing from his nostrils and mouth., Cronus was trying to make his way to Discord, pushing the incompetent dragons out of the way as he tried to use his last breath to end his son's life. But the cave collapsed just before he could make it out.

Discord placed his ear on the rocks so he could hear what was going on inside. All that was audible was the coughs and last gasps of the evil dragons, who were being strangled by their own smoke. Discord, who felt that this was a somewhat bittersweet victory, took a moment to remember his mother.

The peace of the moment was broken, however by the faint rumbling of rocks from behind him. He looked at the rocks puzzled and wondered if the suspicions he had were correct. After a few moments, the rocks flew in all directions, and Cronus emerged from the cave in a huge cloud of dark smoke. He let forth an earth shaking roar and began his charge at Discord, who was still standing still at the side of the cliff.

He remained steady, waiting for the right moment to strike at the charging dragon. At the last second, just before Cronus was about to achieve his ultimate goal, he leapt out of the way and gave his fingers a snap, and took away Cronus' wings in a flash of white light. The crimson dragon screamed as the mist and fog below enveloped him, until he eventually disappeared forever into the dark valley.

He looked around to see the rest of the colony and was greeted with a surprise: the entirety of the colony's population was staring backup at him. They had obviously been alerted by the commotion that was going on and went outside to see what was going on. They were greeted by their ruler being killed by his own ultimate weapon. Needless to say, this caused a fair amount of panic.

Discord looked at the anarchy that used to be his father's highly organized empire. And he laughed. He laughed at the chaos. He laughed at the families rushing to their homes. He laughed at their escapes. And he laughed at the storm clouds that many of them flew into in their panic.

When he was finally done laughing the colony was empty. He looked around and there wasn't a soul in sight. And then he took to the sky, and was off to laugh with somepony whom he hadn't laughed with for a very long time.


	7. Chapter 7

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 7**

It took a little under three hours for Discord to reach the outskirts of the darkened city of Stalliongrad. As he levitated over the city, he looked down upon the hundreds of ponies drudging through with the boredom of everyday life. "Not for long," he thought happily to himself. He was determined to share with ponies the same joy chaos brought to him. "Hope I'm not too rusty," he pondered as he lowered himself into the center of the city.

As he came into view, he saw ponies shrink away from him, grimaces on their faces as they began to slowly back up. He was confused for a brief moment, but then he realized that they were clearly making more room for him and his chaos! Obviously! "But what to do first?" he asked himself.

As he was thinking, he had to squint his eyes to protect them from a newfound blinding light. "You know," he shouted to the unicorns shining bright beams of light on him, "blasting lights in the faces of other's isn't very polite!"

Wait…That was it! The spotlights! What a perfect place to start some chaos! He threw up his arms, changed his hands to circular mirrors, and shone the lights right back at the unicorns, except this time, the beams were reflected with tenfold their original energy, and smacked them right off their feet.

The ponies, once again, to Discord's great confusion, began to scatter and panic just as the dragons at the colony had. "What is wrong with them?" he thought out loud. "This is top shelf material here! Ah well," he shrugged, "just keep on trying, they'll get it eventually.

It wasn't long after he had released a small army of flying dictionaries on the city that it was completely deserted. A virtual ghost town. "Hmph," Discord snarked to himself. "Prudes. They just couldn't handle that much fun. I'm sure the ponies in the next town over won't be nearly as boring."

This was the pattern of Discord's life for the next two hundred years; going from one town to the next trying to spread his unique brand of chaotic humor. He would stop in each place for a week or two-or maybe it was a decade or two. He didn't know as he never kept track- and just started making chaos. From Jell-o floors in Fillydelphia, to pepper shaker flowers in Maneiapolis, to yogurt geysers in Mareyland, and even to the zero gravity in Manehattan, chaos was everywhere and Discord wouldn't stop until every single last river in Equestria ran red with fruit punch. And if the ponies weren't enjoying themselves in his chaos? If they shed even a single lemon juice tear? Well, he would just have to try harder then, wouldn't he? Try harder, but never with something he had already done before. Repetition would be predictable, unoriginal, and possibly worst of all: boring. He stood completely unopposed during this era, with one notable exception of one nighttime showdown in the sea-side city of Sharkham.

It started as normally as any other day for Discord. He woke up on the roof of the Sharkham city hall and was greeted with a beautiful view of the sun rising over the ocean. "I could do with a nice breakfast," he thought. So he snapped his fingers, summoned a chicken, and squeezed the bird until it laid two ivory eggs. Throwing the chicken aside, he popped the raw eggs into his mouth, swishing them around periodically. After a few seconds, he spat the eggs back into his palm, now fully boiled. "Now," he said, "all I need is a little…" he looked out at the ocean. "Salt."

After flying down to the boardwalk and getting his running start, he did a cannonball into the ocean. The second his body made contact with the water, however, the water in the ocean evaporated and he was left with a basin filled with mountains upon mountains of sea salt.

Over the course of the rest of the day, the last of the citizens were driven out of Sharkham (after a nasty incident involving a pack of junkyard dogs, a bookcase, and a tuba) and Discord was getting ready to head on to the next town on his journey back to Canterlot. Before he could even get himself off the ground, though, he was drilled in the back by a concussive beam of energy that sent him crashing into the purple soil below.

Wiping the dirt from his mouth, he turned to face his assailant. "Do you care to tell me what in the world that was abo-"He froze up in the middle of his sentence. On the other side of the town square, adorned in lavish, sparkling jewelry, stood two alicorns. The stallion, whose green eyes stood out against the backdrop of his black coat and his miasmic, starry mane, nodded at his companion: a beautiful mare of stark yellow with a flowing brilliant orange mane. And with this confirmatory nod, the pair lunged at Discord from across the town, flying at him at breakneck speed.

Discord, who was too surprised to process what was going on, stood there in wide-eyed fascination as the stallion rammed into him. Although he barely felt the impact, he was still knocked back well over six yards. A split second after he hit the ground, he could feel a cold tentacle wrap around his neck. When he opened his eyes, he could see that the stallion was using his mane to keep him in a chokehold, while his companion was baring her glowing horn ever so close to Discord's eye.

He snapped his fingers in desperation. "Take me somewhere. Anywhere away from these two!" he thought, running out of breath. He teleported into a nearby house, gasping for air. He looked out a nearby window to see that the mystery duo was frantically searching throughout the town to find him. They didn't utter a word, didn't change facial expression, and didn't show any visage of emotion. Who were these two? Why were they so intent on hurting him? And more importantly, what on earth did they have against his fun?

He leaned up against the wall to decide what to do next. Run away? No, no, they'd just hunt him down again. Hurt them with his chaos? Never. He was a prankster, not a murderer (Cronus and his lackeys notwithstanding.) Then it came to him: a few days prior, when he went to gently poke a pony in the ribs, instead of flying sideways like he had intended, the maroon colt grew a sickly gray color and stopped embracing the order and structure he had known before. He had deemed this a power too dangerous for more frequent use, but now physical harm-maybe even death- was staring him right in the face. He had no other choice.

He blinked to the top of the municipal building again. "Excuse me? You down there!" he shouted. "You're not very good at hide-and-seek, are you now?" Not a second after he had finished his taunt, spells and curses flew past his head. No matter. He blinked to the top of a barn on the opposite side of the street.

"Seems your aim isn't particularly special either. I'll bet you couldn't hit the broadside of a barn!" The alicorns were getting more and more furious with him, losing their focus and slipping into tunnel vision, all according to his plan. He blinked back into his original hiding place to get a better look at them. They were on the ground, slowly backing up into each other. Discord waited until there was just enough space in between the two.

"Time to go," he thought, and he blinked over in between the pair. Before they could react, he had already placed his hands on their backs. The color instantaneously flowed from their bodies, and by the time they turned around to face Discord, he was gone, watching on in the distance sitting atop a small schoolhouse.

The alicorns looked at each other with hate in their eyes. They paced around each other for a few minutes, each one sizing up the other. That is, until the male flew into the air and once again resumed his volley of spells, only this time directed at his mate. The mare, refusing to be her former companion's target practice, followed suit. Before long, the dark night sky was as bright as it was at noontime, completely lit up by the iridescent light of the alicorns' spells.

Discord watched the full-blown war that his attackers had created for themselves. It was becoming more and more a thing of beauty to his eyes. The colors, the lights, and the sheer unbridled chaos of it all were almost too much for him to handle. "I'll have to do this more often," he thought to himself with a grin.

After ten minutes of magic warfare, the both the stallion and the mare were growing visibly tired. Tired, but still hateful toward the other. Summoning what appeared to be the last iota of might they had left in them, they each levitated a large building, and brought it over the other's head, dangling it there.

"Do it," jeered the stallion, "You don't have the guts."

"And you do?" asked the mare sarcastically.

Crash. The two clouds of smoke and dust that resulted from each house conjoined to form one massive cloud of debris. From this cloud of evil, came two things: the stallion's ornate crown, complete with a red gemstone, and one of the mare's bracelets. Both bits of jewelry rolled across the ground until they stopped at Discord's feet. "Nice gems," he said to himself as he tried them on. They added quite a bit of style to Equestria's bringer of good times, so he decided to keep them as the new parts of his wardrobe- meaning, of course, the ONLY parts of his wardrobe- and took off for the next city on his list.

Sometime later, he finally arrived at his destination: Canterlot. "After all of these years," he thought to himself as the mountainside city came into view over the horizons. He had come a long way to get back here, a long way to get back to where he was happiest, and a long way to get back to Tia.

But when he entered the city, he founded it almost abandoned. Not a soul was wandering the bustling streets of the Royal District, no pony was in the park, and no one was to be found in the buildings. "Strange," Discord thought. "Usually towns don't end up like this until _after_ I arrive." He shrugged it off and chalked it up to it being a pony holiday or something. He really didn't care. He knew where to find the pony he was there to see.

When he landed in the garden, a sudden rush of nostalgia rushed through his veins like a fruit punch river. It was all as he remembered it: the flowers, the hedge maze, and-her. There she was. After three hundred years of separation, now the only thing that stood between Discord and his only friend in the world was about forty yards. He licked his hand, slicked back his mane (which promptly stuck back up again, somehow straighter than it had been before) and began his eager march over to her.

She was facing away from him. The perfect opportunity for a prank. Then, in a rare moment of doubt, he decided not to. "No. I'm not going to greet her like that. She deserves better. I'll bet she missed me too."

He was only few feet behind her now. He tapped her on the shoulder. "Did you miss me, Tia?" he asked her playfully. "I missed you." She remained silent. Discord grew anxious. "What's the matter? No, 'Hello! It's a pleasure to see you Discord, my old friend!'?" Still no response. He tapped her again. If he hadn't been listening intently, he never would have heard the gentle sob.

He was then knocked off his feet by a dark blue and black missile. He was laid out on the ground before he fully realized who was standing over him, seething at him.

"Luna? Is that you?" He took another moment to observe the dark blue mare with the miasmic, starry mane. "Wittle Woona! It is you! Do you remember me? I suppose not you were so small, but I'm sure Tia ha-."She shut him up with a kick in his face.

"HOW DAREST THOU ASSAULT THE ROYAL FAMILY OF EQUESTRIA SO GREIVOUSLY? THOU SHALT CONSIDER THINESELF LUCKY, WRETCH, THAT WE DO NOT END YOU HERE AND NOW!"

Discord, still reeling from Luna's kick, spit out one of his protruding fangs, leaving him with only the one on the right side of his mouth. "What?" he asked, still in a daze. "What assault? I did no such thing!"

Luna ripped the crown and bracelet from Discord's body. "THESE! DID THESE ORNAMENTS NOT COME FROM TWO ALICORNS, SUCH AS OURSELF? ONE BLACK AND ONE YELLOW?"

"Yes," he said, "but I still don't see how that…" It was only then that he realized what terrible mistake he had made. Could it be? Those two alicorns back in Sharkham were King Jupiter and Queen Solara? "Oh mother, what have I done?"

Luna stepped off of him and levitated him to his feet as Celestia returned to the scene with a bejeweled box. From said box, came out six gems unlike anything he had seen before. The gems were not levitated by either sister's magic, but instead, lifted on their own, with Luna and Celestia with them. He gazed up at the two in awe as the gems rotated around each of them. Their eyes lit up with a bedazzling white light. And suddenly, a beam of all different colors shot out from behind them. It flew up into the sky, scraping the heavens, only to come fire back down on him. It felt like someone had dropped a few pillowcases full of bricks on his head.

If there was one thing he'd remember about that day, it was the pain. The pain was terrible. He wasn't encased in stone, as it would later be taught. No, his skin, marrow, organs, his entire being was completely turned into granite. It started in his feet and worked its way up to his chest. It was the most excruciating here, so he clutched his heart in agony. He looked up to scream, but the stone eventually glazed over his eyes. And then, there was darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 8**

A few hours into his time in the stony lonesome, he listened on in horror as Luna, the great windbag she had grown to be, announced to what sounded like hordes and hordes of gleeful ponies that, "THE EVIL BEAST HATH BEEN VANQUISHED! OUR BELOVED LAND IS SAFE ONCE AGAIN!"

"What was _that_ supposed to mean?" Discord thought to himself. All he had tried to do was make everypony laugh. Was that not clear? Did Luna not understand that? She must've… they all must've…

The physical pain of being turned to stone was awful, but at least it was temporary. The memory of the day Celestia turned on him, however, stayed in his mind for the full duration of his imprisonment, playing over and over again like the worst kind of horror movie. What he did to her parents was terrible, of that there was no denying, but did she even know what they did? No announcements, no attempts to talk to him, nothing at all. Just straight to the attempted murder. Whenever his thoughts turned to her he would ask himself question after unanswerable question, flinging himself into seemingly endless bouts of self-pity. "Did she have any idea how far I came to see her again? Did she have a clue as to what I did to keep her safe? Did she know that I would have done anything for her?"

Centuries passed and eventually the sorrow and pity morphed into rage and hatred toward all ponies. How dare they treat him like that? How dare they betray him after he strived for their entertainment with decades upon decades of non-stop hilarious chaos? How dare they leave him to rot as a statue after he did unspeakable things for their survival? As with the ponies, the more he thought about Celestia, the worse she became. He had shown her what it was like to have a friend, taught her life was more than just studying, and fixed her relationship with her sister before it began and THIS is how she repaid him? "If I ever break free from this," he thought, "she'll pay…"

As time passed, the history of his reign slipped into the stuff of legends, and ponies who would walk by his statue stopped referring to him as "Discord: Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony" (a moniker he quite liked, by the way.) Instead they said that he was a mere representation of the idea of anarchy. Because ponies thought he just another statue, they weren't too careful about what they said. "Eww. Why would anypony sculpt something so ugly?" was always a pretty good summation of their opinions.

"Fillystines," he thought whenever they insulted him. "Obviously they wouldn't know true beauty if it bit them on the flank. I'm an adonis."

Other than that, he really never heard anything else of interest. Equestria was so boring under the sisters; there was nothing chaotic going on at all. Yes, there was one extraordinarily entertaining incident involving Luna, "eternal night," and something about a banishment (he never really could figure out all the details of who and where but it seemed pretty chaotic), but that was hardly worth the centuries of order that came after it.

The real juicy information came a very long time afterward. It started with a lot of panic about yet another eternal night. "You know you're getting old when you've lived through TWO eternal nights," Discord mused to himself. The disorder, much to Discord's chagrin, was short lived, as within a few hours, peace had reclaimed the land. But as he heard the joyful cries of the ponies in Canterlot, he could feel….something. A vague feeling returning in his left hoof.

A few days after the unannounced anarchy, he overheard a conversation between two castle guards. "Did you hear that Princess Celestia has a sister now?"

"You don't say? Who is she?"

"You didn't hear? The story we tell our foals about the two princesses are all true. There really WAS a Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago, and she WAS the Princess's sister. The Elements of Harmony ACTUALLY exist."

And so the dimwitted guard taught Discord all he needed to know about exactly what the cause of the eternal nights. "It seems Luna embraced the dark side. I'm going to have fun with this." As if that weren't helpful enough, the guard was also so kind as to expunge what had been used against Nightmare Moon after both of her little tantrums. It didn't take long for him to put two and five together and see that these Elements of Harmony were probably the six gems he saw when the sisters imprisoned him.

And most importantly, the guard (who, by this point, Discord made it a point to eventually thank for all the help with his scheming) spoke of the new bearers of the Elements: Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash.

It wasn't the last time he would hear these names either. For the rest of the year, he would hear these ponies' names spoken about in Canterlot. From eliminating a dragon, to winning the Best Young Fliers Competition with a Sonic Rainboom, to ending a land dispute between buffalo and ponies, to even ruining The Grand Galloping Gala. Yes, it seemed these mares were becoming quite the celebrities.

What he found most important of all during this year was that he was slowly but surely regaining feeling in his body. As the year went on and the chaos that followed these mares persisted, his nerves began to work again. By the year's end, he found that he could almost find the strength to finally break free. "Just a little more…"

"It's confusion!" one of the fillies angrily whispered as she walked away.

"Evil!" snarled another.

"Chaos!" growled the last one.

"Bingo!" Discord happily thought as he felt the stone detach from his skin and begin cracking. He couldn't help but laugh in excitement. After over a thousand years, he was finally going to be free again.

The granite began falling off him in chunks, starting with his head. After untold centuries of darkness, the sunlight burned his eyes like someone poured the contents of a salt shaker into them. The fresh, cool air made him wheeze, and made it feel as if he was shoulder deep in snow. When he finally was able to move again, he fell to his knees on the ground, as his bones were still weak from over millennia of dormancy. He coughed up bits and pieces of the stone that had been lining his insides. "That was…unpleasant," he said ironically to himself after vomiting up the last chunk of rock.

For the first time since the day he was imprisoned, he looked up at the sky. It was beautiful. But something was…missing. "Purple," he thought. "It needs more purple. But not now." No, he needed to start small. Work his way up. Deal with the Elements first. Make sure he couldn't be locked away again. But before he could do anything, he wanted to send a message. There was one pony who needed to know that he was back, and he knew just how to do it too.

Going against all his rules about not repeating his chaos, he snapped his fingers and created massive cotton candy storm clouds, just waiting to burst with chocolate dairy drink. "Haven't lost my touch in the least," he said to himself as he removed his eagle claw from his body and patted himself on the back with it.

"Good luck, my little ponies," said Celestia as she lowered her horn to twilight's shoulder. "The fate of Equestria is in your hooves."

"Thanks, Princess," replied Twilight Sparkle determinedly. "We won't let you down."

Discord watched the scene from the balcony above the Elements storage room. He had to laugh a little bit. Did they really thin they could beat him? Not that it was anything personal against the young mares; it was just that he wasn't too keen on going through that agony again.

He looked down at Celestia, who was still looking around, trying to decipher where his laugh had come from. He leaped down to the ground and called over to her. "You are genuinely scared of me, aren't you Celestia? After all our history?"

She turned around to face him. "I'm not afraid of you, Discord!" she shouted triumphantly, stomping her hoof to the floor.

Discord chuckled and mumbled under his breath, "You should be."

She walked over to him, horn already glowing, ready to defend herself at any moment. "What are you still doing here? "

Discord reached over to her chin and lifted it to look him in the eye. "I just thought that now that the kids are gone the adults could get to discussing more important things."

She recoiled from him almost immediately, not trying in the slightest to hide her disgust. "What could I possibly have to talk about with you?"

He shrugged. "You know: politics, economics, the fact that you tried to murder me, and maybe some of the stories in the tabloids."

That drove her over the edge. "You deserved everything you got, Discord! You tortured ponies for years! You killed my parents!"

"Hey, hey! I didn't do anything to those ponies that you wouldn't have laughed at when we were young. I was just entertaining. And to be fair, your parents technically killed each-"She had smacked him in the jaw before he could finish. "You know, Celestia, the smacking me in the mouth bit is getting a little…predictable. Then again, so is everything in Equestria nowadays."

"BE QUIET!" she screamed. "NOPONY HAS EVER LIKED YOU, NOR WILL THEY EVER! YOU MAKE THEM MISERABLEAND DESTROY EVERYTHING THEY KNOW! YOU ARE A **MONSTER!**"

He was in a bit of shock for a moment. For all his scheming and plotting, deep down, he still was debating on whether or not to actually hurt her. Until now. He clapped his hands together, locking them together, and held them close to his face. "Really, Celestia? _I'm_ the monster? I think there are two ponies who would beg to differ." Just then, he threw up his arms, and waved them around creating two colored vortexes: one dark black, the other a golden yellow, and from each vortex of swirling light, walked ghostly visages of King Jupiter and Queen Solara.

Celestia looked at the ghostly images of her parents for a minute, dumbfounded. They looked back at her. Finally, Jupiter broke the silence. "We're very disappointed in you, Celestia."

She was flabbergasted. "B-b-but why, father?" she stuttered out. "Haven't I done a good job? Isn't everypony happy?"

Solara waved her horn, and from it flew a mystical cloud of smoke, which contained the image of two poor ponies shivering in the cold. "What is your explanation for this? Ponies never went without food or shelter when we were alive! Everyday YOUR subjects are out in the elements clinging to their last breaths, and what are you doing to help them?"

Celestia struggled for an answer. "I-I never knew about any…the ponies have never told me…" Jupiter raised his hoof to silence her.

"What about Luna? Where has she been all these years? Helping you run the kingdom we left the both of you? Standing by your side?"

Solara chimed in, almost sobbing. "What did your father and I tell you before we left to find Discord?"

The disheartened princess lowered her head in shame. "You told me to keep Luna safe no matter what. But you must understand. I had no choice. She was evil and I…"

"You what?" asked Jupiter bitterly. "Sent her to the moon with the Elements? What did your little student and her friends do with them? They turned her back, didn't they? Why couldn't you do the same? What reason did you have to banish the last family you had?"

By this point, Celestia stopped trying to give answers and lay on the floor clutching her head between her hooves crying her eyes out. Discord's ghosts didn't stop there, though.

Solara bent down to her. "Do you want to know what the worst part about it is, little one? You hid him from us. When we saw that there was a chaotic monster tearing across Equestria, you said nothing. Ponies were miserable, the land was in total disarray, and we died because you kept your little friend a secret. You killed us, Celestia. It was all your fault."

After her mother had finished talking, her sobs grew louder and, starting with her tail, the color was slowly fading from her body, turning her the familiar shade of grey her parents had been the day they died.

Seeing that their work had been finished, Discord waved his hands though the specters and made them dissipate into the air like clouds of multi-colored dust. Of course he had been controlling them (and everything they said) the whole time. The better to hurt his enemy with. But as he looked down upon his one-time friend, he was surprised to find himself joyful. In the back of his mind, he suspected that he would feel bad exacting his revenge. That somehow he would still feel an inkling of compassion for her, but he simply didn't. She had turned on him and locked him in the worst type of punishment he could think of; a fate worse than outright death. He had simply evened the score.

Before he left for the hedge maze, he snapped his finger together and created a mini-chocolate rainstorm over Celestia's head. "Enjoy yourself. It always was your favorite," he whispered to her before blinking out of the castle.

He was back in his cage within twenty-four hours.


	9. Chapter 9

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 9**

Overconfidence (n.): a misplaced or overestimation of one's abilities.

This was the definition Discord came up with for the word he would hear most over his next term of imprisonment. After being moved back to the garden and propped up once more on the familiar pillar, in addition to the usual snarks about his appearance (which, in a way, were now even more hurtful, as the ponies knew for a fact that he was more than a statue), the ponies now talked about his so called "overconfidence." They talked down to him like he was a naughty child who needed a scolding. As if they even came close to him!

There was a fairly common method to the madness: "You know, if he wasn't so darn full of himself," one would say to another, "he would have taken over Equestria!"

The other would shudder. "Let's not even dwell on it!" And they would walk off, laughing at him as they went.

He was powerful. So much so, in fact, that some claimed he bordered on godhood. He could think things and make them happen. Just like that. That much was common knowledge. The Elements of Harmony were broken right in front of him. He saw them fail. "If that isn't reason enough to be confident," he thought "nothing is."

He had other things to worry about that were more important than the completely wrong opinions of a few misinformed ponies. What he was going to do upon his next liberation was chief amongst them. Now, with non-alicorns wielding the Elements, it would only be a matter of time until one of them….passed on, and once again break the spell. To pass the time, he often made bets against himself thinking who would go first. "Ms. Sparkle in an unfortunate book shelf avalanche? No, No! Pinkie Pie in an unexpected cupcake making accident! A better one still! A tree falling on Fluttershy! Oh the irony!"

Of course, he had never been a stupid draconequus. He was calculating. He knew the ball wasn't in his court. As soon as he broke free again, Celestia would sic the new bearers of the Elements on him like a pack of rabid dogs. It didn't help that another attempt at revenge would be dreadfully predictable. No, he'd need to go about maintaining his freedom a different way next time. And after a few years of deliberation he finally came up with it: bury the hatchet with Celestia. Despite the fact that this plan was, after all, created in his best interests, Discord really and truly began to miss the days of his life when he was carefree, happy, and friends with Celestia. Nopony hunted him. Nopony hated him. Nopony turned him to stone. Yes, the best course of action was an appeal to his old friend; he was sure of it.

Soon the familiar feeling returned to his foot and slowly snuck its way up his body with the everyday chaos that filled the world. Once again, the big day came when one final bit of disorder fully broke the curse. The stone broke, his eyes burned, his skin grew cold, and he fell to his knees once again to cough up the remaining granite. When he looked up from the dirt, Celestia was standing there, glaring down at him.

"I've already alerted the Elements," she said coldly. "They'll be here in a few minutes."

Discord raised an eyebrow. "Always so hasty, Tia! You haven't even let me say my peace yet!"

She turned away from him, spreading her wings as if she was ready to fly away. "There's nothing for us to talk about. You're evil and you'll pay for what you've done."

"Can't let her get away now," Discord thought. With that, he snapped his fingers together and replaced her wings with his arms and vice versa. "Ah-ah-ah. I'm serious. I'm offering you a once in a life time deal here!"

Celestia tried to avert her eyes away from him, but the arms on her back started to writhe, grabbed her face, and directed it back toward him. She groaned, "I'm listening."

Discord clapped her wings together in joy. "Marvelous, Tia. I knew you'd come around. I am offering you, Princess Celestia of Equestria, another chance at eternal friendship with me, the one and only Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. Whaddya say?"

"Are you serious?" she asked him with a hint of outrage.

"I've never been more serious in my life. We have an agreement, yes?" he asked her closing his eyes and extending her wing to seal the deal.

"You really ARE that arrogant, aren't you?" she asked him condescendingly.

His eyes blasted open with the sounds of shattering glass and the alabaster wing pulled back with the speed of a pulled up window shade. "Come again?"

"I don't know if being in stone all that time has affected your memory at all but after all you've done to me and my family do you really expect for me to just forgive you?"

Discord looked at her with a puzzled look on his face. He shrugged with the white wings and said, "Pretty much?" Celestia groaned with frustration and began to walk away. As he gave chase he called to her, "Why can't we just go back to the way things were?" She stopped dead in her tracks. "You know, back in the good old days. When we were young-"

"Stop right there, Discord!" she shouted with royal authority. Discord shrunk back from her and switched their appendages back. "You are never to mention that time to me again. There is NO way I can just forget all that you've done. You brought misery to thousands of ponies."

"That's an odd way to pronounce 'fun and joy,'" said Discord.

"You killed my parents."

Discord coughed, "Self defense."

"And worst of all, you nearly corrupted me for all time with your ghosts. If it hadn't been for Luna…"

"She came anyway and you weren't corrupted forever. And deep down you knew what those things said weren't true. After all that, no real harm done to anypony. Now, about that friendship…" he said as he extended his paw to accept a hoofshake.

Celestia sighed and turned away. Under her breath she said 'Sometimes I wish I just never met you that day in the garden."

Discord thought about this for a minute, processing what he should do next. Then an idea hit him. "Oh that'll teach her!" he thought. "After this she'll see the value in my friendship." He leaned over to her and whispered into her ear, "That can be arranged."

Before she could spin around to ask him what he meant, he had already grasped a sizeable portion of the air, bunched it up like it was a curtain, and pulled at it. The world around them was torn away like it had been wallpaper, and they now stood in a pure white, blank plane, barren of anything but the two of them.

"What is the meaning of this Discord?" she demanded.

He smirked to himself. "You'll find out in a few moments, Tia." With these words the whiteness around them began to slowly fill with colors. Blues, greens, yellows, and reds snaked their way into position to form a larger picture. Celestia was dumbfounded and could only stare on in wide-eyed wonder, as opposed to Discord, who was cleaning dirt from his claws. While they were waiting for the world to reform, Discord couldn't help but to ask which of the old Elements had died first. When he finally broke her out of her wonder induced trance, she told him Applejack had passed away the previous year, "due to natural causes." Discord rested his face in his palm. "I just lost a bet to myself. I've hit a new low."

When the world around them finished forming, they were still in the royal garden. "Why would you waste all that time and energy on a simple parlor trick?" she asked bewildered.

Discord moved very close to her, put his arm around her, and pointed to the sky. "It's a bird! It's a Pegasus! It's…" a small, slow moving blot flew into view past the mountain.

"It's you," she said. "You brought me back to the day I found you in the garden!" Discord nodded.

"You want me gone so badly, I thought I'd give you the chance. I'd better get a move on it, though." He pulled up the fur on his paw to reveal a fleshy layer of pink skin with a watch on his wrist. "In about four minutes, Mini-Me up there is going to fall and make the crashing that brings you out here to find him."

Celestia flew off like a rocket toward the tired draconequus while Discord laid his back up against a tree to relax. He saw as Celestia caught his past self from falling and brought him on her back to a nearby forest.

"There," She said as she flew back to him. "It's done. We've never met."

He applauded sarcastically. "Well done, Celestia, well done!"

"Enough of this!" she said triumphantly. "Bring me back to the present. I want to see the improvements I just made."

Discord grinned. "As you wish, your highness." He snapped his fingers and once again, the world's colors melted around them. They found themselves once again on the white plain.

"I can't wait to see how much better the world is now," Celestia said to herself as the world's image was being slowly rebuilt. Discord just kept smiling to himself. She had no clue of the ramifications of what she just did.

This time, when the colors snaked into their positions, they were not the familiar shades of green and blue, but shades of gray and black. Celestia looked around with a look of concern on her face as the place that had been the Canterlot garden morphed into a sickly, barren wasteland of sulfur and fire.

"Where have you taken me, Discord?" she asked him with a perturbed tone. "This is not Canterlot."

"Au contraire, ma princesse," remarked Discord slyly. "This IS Canterlot. Well, what's left of it."

Still taking in the horror of the black wasteland that had been her home; she looked around for a few minutes. The only things that were still standing for miles were a section of her ruined castle, and a gargantuan palace at the foot of the mountain. Discord noticed the shock on her face when she looked out on the rest of Equestria and saw that it was largely the same: blackness covered the land, with an occasional fire burning dimly on the few dead trees that were still in the ground. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was a "How did this happen?" she asked. He could tell that she was starting to choke up, so he got right to it. He clutched her wing and blinked away.

As soon as they reappeared, Discord quickly pulled her behind an opulent pillar: they were in the aforementioned gargantuan palace. The hall they were in was a corruption of Canterlot Tower. A closer glance at the floors revealed that they were made completely from the ruins of the old Canterlot castle. Flanked by two lines of pillars on both sides of the room, a blood red carpet spanned the length of the hall from front to back. The stained glass windows depicted the horrible story of this land's ruler: a familiar, massive, crimson dragon. When they poked their heads out from behind the pillar, they saw the hall's demented ruler: Cronus, sitting on a most peculiar throne. He was sitting on the moon.

"HOW COULD THI-," Discord quickly put his finger on her lip and quieted her.

"We're not the ghosts of Hearth's Warming's Eve Past, Tia. He can hear us." He looked back out at his father again to check and see if they were in danger. He had barely heard her shout. He couldn't deny that it was unpleasant seeing him again, but if that was what it took to teach Celestia this lesson, then so be it.

Much more quietly this time, she asked, "How could this have happened?"

Discord reached around her shoulder and pointed out the stained glass windows. "I guess its story time, Celestia. You see, in the life you lived, I killed Cronus and stopped his plans for total domination to get back to you." As he said this, he noticed that her face lit up with surprise with this new revelation. He pointed to a partly shattered window of Cronus commanding the young Discord around. "Well, what happened after you intervened a few moments ago, my father caught up to me and brought me back to the colony. After using my talents for a few years, he tired of and disposed of me like a broken toy."

Next, he directed his attention to a window portraying Cronus leading many dragons in an attack on Canterlot. "Later still, he developed the notion that he should rule Equestria. So he gang-pressed a few other dragons to help him take over your parent's kingdom."

"My parents…" Celestia muttered out. "What happened to them?"

Discord bit his lip. He debated on whether or not to show her. "No, I have to," he thought to himself. He told her to take a look at the rings Cronus was wearing on his fingers. He peered out from behind the pillar with her. He could only hear her muffled gasp when she saw that the "rings" were, in fact, her parents' crowns and breastplates. She was close to tearing up now.

"Discord?" she asked quietly. "Where is Luna? Where is my sister?"

He sighed. "I really hate to do this to you, but…" He directed her attention to another, newer looking window. On it was an emblazoned image of Nightmare Moon, standing atop the moon, while glaring ferociously at Cronus. "Without any strong positive influences, Luna transformed indefinitely into Nightmare Moon. She tried to lead a small resistance against Cronus for a time, but it was all for naught. In a final ditch effort to kill him, she used every last bit of her power to become one with the moon, so she could crash it into him." They both glanced once again at Cronus' peculiar throne. "It didn't work."

Celestia shook her head, just barely holding back her emotions now. "No, no, no, no. 'No strong positive influences?' I know I'll regret asking, but, Discord, where am I in all of this?"

He started to snap his fingers, but stopped midway through. "Are you sure? It's not pretty…"

She hesitated. "Yes. I'm sure. I'm a big filly. I can handle it."

"Whatever you say, Princess," he said as he once again grabbed her wing and blinked out of the evil hall.

This time when they reappeared, they were outside the ruins of Canterlot castle. Without a word, they slowly walked into the crumbling remains of home of Equestria's once great rulers. As they went further and further into the ruins, they began to hear the sounds of a young filly talking to herself. He stopped Celestia where she was, and laid his hands on both his head and hers. When he removed them, he told her, "Now we can be as loud as we please."

They both approached the source of the sound; they found that it was none other than the young Celestia. She was reading the last of a massive stack of books she had piled up in the area of the wrecked library behind her.

"Welcome back to the Canterlot library, Celestia. Clearly," he motioned towards the pile of books, "you've spent a lot of time here." After this joke fell flat he decided to get on with her story. "After Luna was born you had no one to explain to you what was going on. No one to tell you that you should love her no matter what. You grew to resent both Luna and your parents for loving her too much. When Cronus came calling, you abandoned your family and your subjects to their own devices. They never showed you the affection, the friendship, you craved so you just left them to die. You retreated to the far reaches of the map for a few years, until things settled down. Then you snuck back to the castle hoping to spend the rest of your days doing the only thing that ever mattered to you: studying."

She wasn't making any attempts to hide it now. She began to cry her eyes out, screaming out her denials of the young mare in front of her. "NO! NO! NO! NO! That is NOT me! I would never do something so cowardly and terrible!" She threw herself to the ground and buried her face in her hooves.

Discord hated that this was what it took to teach her. But it was necessary for her to grow as a ruler (and more importantly, to show her that he can be a positive force, and that letting him stay free would be a good thing.) He bent down to pat her on the head to console her.

"You are completely right. That isn't you. That is the Celestia you could have been, the one who did not ever meet me. And she had quite a different life than the one you remember. That Princess never truly appreciated friendship, never knew the importance of her sister before it was too late, and eventually let my father and his cronies win. Her life never came into focus. She drifted through much of her life, with no social interaction, going from one book to the next, blindly believing that throwing a, per say stone covering over the unpleasant things would make it all go away. She learned to do things by herself & she never ever had a single friend."

As he said this, the world once more melted around them, until it was the day that they met again. "The only question is, Tia," he lifted her head up so that she could see the young draconequus flying by, "would you do it all again?"

She looked back and forth at him and the Discord in the air. Then she took a long look up in the sky and let the young Discord fall into the garden. "YES!" Discord shouted in his head. "My freedom is a sure thing now!"

Celestia quickly got up and regained her composure while the world melted around them for a final time. The familiar colors of Canterlot Tower seeped into the whiteness around them. Once the scene had been rebuilt, Discord asked her, "Well, what did we learn today?"

She looked at him with hate in her eyes. "We learned that you are a madman who enjoys to see me suffer!"

"Actually," Discord said, getting a little annoyed that she couldn't see the point to all of this, "I gave you something most ponies will never get: a second chance. An opportunity to see what life could have been if you did that one little thing differently. You even asked for it yourself. And all you can do is insult me? I showed you that everything happens for a reason, and that the way things happen to begin with is usually for the best. And if I'm not mistaken, I also told you what I did to protect you all from my father, did I not?"

With this Celestia blushed, and looked at the ground as if to hide her shame. She waited a long time before making her next move, which surprised him thoroughly: she reached out and hugged him tightly. "Thank you," she whispered into his ear. "Thank you so much." In his joyfulness, he thought he could hear the scrambling of hooves outside.

When she let him go, she looked him in the eyes and started to announce something. "Discord, for all that you've done today, and over one thousand years ago to protect Equestria, I hereby-," Discord was waiting on her words with extreme eagerness as the doors behind him crashed open.

"Don't worry, Princess! We'll save you!" shouted a voice from behind Discord.

Celestia screamed at them, telling them to stop, but before Discord could turn around, he felt the all too familiar pain pierce at his back: the Elements. She had tricked him. That was the only explanation. She bought her time until her little hit squad could come and re-imprison him. "So much for teaching you any lessons…" he told her and the stone once again glazed over his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 10**

It was funny. You'd think being locked inside a statue would be a pretty stagnant thing. That nothing about it would change over the years. But that wasn't the case at all. With each stoning, Discord's mental torment grew and grew. First his mind was filled with anguish over Celestia's betrayal. Then he kicked himself for eighty years over his (slight!) arrogance whilst dealing with Twilight Sparkle. Now, all he spent his days doing was thinking about Celestia's latest act of unspeakable cruelty towards him.

The first stoning wasn't even that bad in comparison. At least they had a legitimate reason to want him gone! He had barely been out forty-five minutes last time before her little harmonious delta force showed up. And now, the kicker was that he wasn't even doing anything! In fact, he was trying to help Celestia, his ulterior motives for helping her notwithstanding, of course. He had to wonder if anything he had told her stuck. If _anything_ she saw when he showed her a world without his chaos meant anything to her, besides his overt "everything happens the way it does for a reason" aesop. No, she clung to her past grudges until the last, buying her time until the Elements showed up to put him down without question, without remorse, without even seeing what he was doing. He had given her a chance at friendship. He tried to educate her. And she spat in his face. No more second chances. No more playing around. She had forced it on him and he had no other choice. The next time he broke out, he was going to _stay _out. He was going to have to go down a road he hadn't set foot on since the day his father died: the road of destructive chaos.

There was something distinct about the surrounding world this time, though. The comparative peacefulness and order of Equestria seemed to fade away. It was almost as if the everyday chaos was increasing tenfold annually. The Gala was ruined (a recurring theme he had noticed over the centuries,) crime in Canterlot was running amok, and there was general disorder and disharmony amongst ponies everywhere. It was almost like something wanted him out. But as far as he knew, the Elements were still alive and well, as the cracking in his feet hadn't begun yet. He was still going to be in there for a while.

Although the bouts of chaos only lasted for the first decade or so of this interment, they still, somehow, gave him a small portion of his powers back. Granted, what he had wasn't nearly enough to do anything significant, but it was enough to disturb the sudden placidity of Equestria. He found that with great effort and focus, he could actually project a small, astral portion of his being out into the world. Beyond this, however he could do little. He was blind as a bat in this ghostly form, invisible, and what powers he had gotten back were spent getting him out, after which he could only hold the spell for about an hour or so. All the benefit he got from these little escapes was a bi-monthly stroll to the edge of the garden.

It was during one such outing that he discovered a solitary gardener, peacefully sleeping underneath a shady tree. After happening on him, Discord stopped for a moment. What could he do? His ethereal self surely couldn't play any pranks on the smug little slacker. "Ugh," he said to himself. "What's the point of being free if I can't-"

"I love lemon puddin'," murmured the lazy pony, who now was starting to let drool slip out the side of his unconscious face.

Discord was partially repulsed by the slobber, but more so the fact that he was in the presence of a pony who just claimed to _**love **_lemon pudding! Clearly the most inferior of all pudding flavors! Everypony knows that chocolate is the best! That's why he'd never made any lemon pudding mudslides. Nopony in their right mind would ever favor lemons over chocolate. "Hmmm. Their right minds…"

"Why does this have to be so tight a fit?" he grunted as he tried to squeeze his ghostly foot into the ponies ear. The gardener, who was still sleeping like a foal, didn't feel a thing. After a fair bit of stumbling, tripping over his own tail, and overcoming certain claustrophobic tendencies that he never knew he had, Discord finally made his way into the gardener's ear. He shrunk himself down to miniscule size and went on to walk leisurely deeper into the grand hallway that was his tired friend's aural canal.

After a few minutes of walking, he finally made it to the end of the hallway, which was covered by a thin white layer of wallpaper. "Now if I'm right," he said as he approached the white wall, clutching a portion of it, "what I'm looking for should be behind…HERE!" The wallpaper fell away to reveal what he had been looking for. He had made it into the gardener's dreams.

As he journeyed about the dreamscape, he came to the disturbing realization as to just how much this stallion loved lemon pudding. The earth was made out of hardened lemon pudding. The sky was the same sickening shade of yellow. And when he finally found the guy, he was diving from a thick, golden, lemon-y waterfall, right into a pool of the stuff. Discord raised his eyebrow at the sheer strangeness of the scene, not sure what to make of such a bizarre pony. When he took another look around, and saw how much chaos he was surrounded by, he applauded. It had been quite some time since he had seen such quality craziness.

Unfortunately, the gardener had no such appreciation for Discord. Alerted to his guest, he literally flew out of the pool (a feat Discord would've considered impressively chaotic for an earth pony, had it not been a dream,) and started running and screaming at the top of his lungs "IT'S THE STATUE MONSTER HERE TO EAT MY LIVER! EEEEEK" And in a few short moments, he awoke and Discord was expelled from his head and sucked back into his statue to rejoin his physical body. After putting the strange gardener, whom Discord quickly discerned was odd even by his own standards, out of sight and out of mind, he figured out exactly what he was going to do next with his new dream-walking prowess.

And then he waited. Marking his mental calendar with each passing month, year and decade that went by. Surely enough, the feeling in his foot returned to him once again, like an old friend. Over the course of the next year, the fissures in the stone gradually went up the length of his body, as methodically as they had in the past.

Then, the big day finally came when the cracks were so deep and so many as to ensure that he'd be free in twenty-four hours. But instead of waiting with the anticipation of a school filly on Hearth Warming's Eve, he gave himself one last out of body experience. He allowed his spirit to float up towards the castle, slipping past the guards, phasing through the gates, and weaving in and out of the hallowed halls. As he traversed the palace, he couldn't help but see the places he and Celestia played as children. He still knew every inch of the place by heart "Stay the course, Discord," he thought out loud. "You know why you're here."

After little more than a few minutes of travel, he finally made it to the ivory door that lead to Celestia's bed chambers. Even though he walked through it with ease, he found that the room was far too dark to see anything. Realizing that he didn't have time to enter her dreams like he had with the gardener, he gave a quick snap, and he instantly found himself just beyond the whit wall. He was beholden to a beautiful green field with rolling hillsides. The hills themselves were covered in the most fragrant smelling flowers known to ponykind, whose beautiful colors were reflected divinely by the radiant sunlight above. "Is it too late to go back to the pudding guy?" Discord groaned to himself.

As he was walking through the fields he heard a soft voice call out from behind a hill. "Oh, you spoil me!" Upon hearing this, Discord flung himself behind the mound, ready to spring up and surprise her at any moment.

When he felt the time was right, he popped his head out from behind his hiding place and with a smug expression on his face said, "Hello." Celestia looked up from her picnic with an alabaster stallion, which promptly disappeared. He looked at her for a long time afterwards before finally muttering, "Well, that sure was awkward."

After this, Celestia seemed to lighten her mood, even going so far as to chuckle a bit. "Alright brain," she said as if she had just been pranked. "I'll cave. Why am I dreaming about Discord?"

He raised his eyebrow. "Dreaming?" he asked condescendingly. "Sorry to disappoint, Celestia, but you're talking to the genuine article!" As he said this, he snapped his fingers and conjured a reclined lawn chair to rest his back on. She only looked half was shocked as he thought she would. "What's the matter? Didn't think I'd be back so soon?" he asked her with a mocking concern.

She waved her hoof in dismissal. "No, no. I knew you'd be back soon. I just never expected you to start invading my dreams."

Discord grinned and snapped up a fedora and a striped sweater. "You were expecting who then, Filly Kruger?" Celestia wore an expression of unjustified playfulness. If only she knew what he was about to tell her. He snapped the clothing articles off his body and got right back to business.

"You do realize why I'm here, right?"

"To accept my friendship?" she asked him humbly.

Discord was shocked by the audacity. How dare she mock him so! She was making the same offer he gave to her before she betrayed him. "I don't know if you're just being arrogant, or if all these years haven't been as kind to your memory as they have been to mine. Do you remember what happened the last time I broke out? Or do you want a refresher course?"

Celestia looked down at the bright green grass with shame and started kicking the dirt around with her hooves. She had the appearance of a filly apologizing to her parents for being disobedient. "I'm truly sorry about that," she stuttered out when she finally raised her head. I was too wrapped up in what you were showing me to remember that I called the Elements. I didn't think they'd get to Canterlot so soon, and-,"

"Save it, Princess. We both know what you did that day. You knew full well that I wouldn't be stupid enough to be beaten again, so you waited. You lured me into trusting you, baited me with kindness. And when you saw your little ponies burst in behind me…well you just jumped for joy on the inside didn't you?" Although I must admit, you did put on a convincing act during those last couple of seconds. Well done. Top shelf deceit." He applauded softly.

"I was being sincere, Discord! I was granting you your freedom when the Elements came in! Do you know what I did to the ponies who did that? I stripped them of their titles as Bearers! They weren't allowed anywhere near the castle again!"

By this point, Discord had already lain back down on his chair, resting his head on his arm, while half listening to what she was telling him. "Wow," he said after taking a deep breath. "That was a lot to take in."

She calmed down. "So…you're happy?"

He smirked. "Oh yes, I'm so very happy. It always does my heart good to see somepony commit themselves to a lie like that, and that was an amazing performance! How many times did you practice that in front of your mirror? 400? 500?"

She sighed with exasperation. "That wasn't an act, Discord. I'm really-,"

"I really do hate to change the subject," he said, lying through his teeth as he felt nothing turning the conversation from her lies, "but do you know _why_ I showed you what I did that day? The last time I broke free?"

She shrugged with confusion. 'You told me what it was for. It was to show me that everything that happens for a reason."

He shook his head and waved his hands. "No, no, no. Not that. I mean the message that I didn't beat you over the head with." She stood there, slack jawed and bewildered by what he just told her. "Hmph. Some thought you've put into it since. The thing is, Celestia, in the grand scheme of things, we need each other. Both of our existences have been dedicated to the destruction of all the other stands for. And even in the times before that we were…" he hesitated. "Anyways, the point is, _you need me_. You need my chaos. Without it, you're nothing, you have no purpose. You need me to define you just as harmony needs chaos to define itself. And you've tried to repeatedly destroy me. Even when I come to you, offering up renewed friendship. Offering to give up my chaos, _who I am_, to make it work."

Celestia tried one last time. "Discord. Please. I'm not trying to trick you. Just listen. I want to make my peace."

"I'm sure you do," he snarked as he tapered off towards the alabaster wall. "Just like I did. We can discuss the finer points of the matter when I see you in person tomorrow." Just as he reached out to touch the wall, he heard he utter one more, prophetic sentence.

"You won't like what you find when you wake up tomorrow."

He turned around to look her in the eye.

"Neither will you," he said coldly before blinking out of the dream and back into his prison to wait for the next morning.


	11. Chapter 11

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 11**

As the stone fell off his body the next morning, all the pain and anger from the last millennium came right out to the forefront. Now he was going to make everyone pay for it. All of it. After he had removed the last fragment of granite from his shoulder, he began his slow yet purposeful march towards the castle gates. The grass beneath his feet singed after each heavy step. He stopped and looked up into Luna's placid night sky. Instantly he knew that this harmony simply wouldn't do for such a momentous occasion. He was going to seize Equestria, after all! So with a snap of his fingers, the stars above began to plummet to the earth, destroying buildings and anything else in their way as they hit the ground with brilliant lights glaring. Nopony screamed, Nopony ran, they just let it happen. In fact, he could scarcely see anypony anywhere.

He arrived at the drawbridge only to find it closed, but that wasn't going to stop him. He conjured up two massive scissors that hovered just next to the chains holding the bridge up. The chains gave forth an audible crunching before the drawbridge itself hit the ground hard, shattering the silence of the cool night air. The locked gate behind the bridge was even less of a problem. He threw open his talon and in a few short seconds, the entire locking mechanism for the gate ripped clean out of the door and landed in his palm, handle and all. The door slowly fell backwards and hit the castle floor with a thud.

As soon as he walked through the threshold into the main hall, he got right to work with his "redecorating". The black and white banners featuring the sisters' cutie marks were the first things to go. They were all either immediately ripped off or replaced by other banners entirely, the design of which was Discord's completely animated hands crushing both of the marks into a fine powder over and over again. The rugs quickly found themselves stuck to the ceilings above, as if the gravity in the room had stopped working. As he walked by them, the opulent stained glass windows at the top of the stairwell were shattered, as if a massive boulder had flown through them from the outside. The razor sharp shards of glass flew all over the floor, effectively making the main hall something of a minefield.

As he walked through the halls causing extra mayhem wherever he could, he came across the double doors that lead to the kitchen. He swung them open, hoping to scare some poor sap half to death, but there was nopony to be found. "Oh well," he chuckled, "Might as well work on some surprises for when they come back!" He reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of freshly squeezed orange juice. He examined it facetiously in his palm for a few seconds before finally opening it and pouring a bit of it on the floor. Instead of a delicious juice, eight or nine full oranges fell to the ground, rolling all around the kitchen. Next, he rigged the eggs to hatch whenever the carton was opened up. Next, he fiddled with the stove dial until a brilliant pillar of fire shot up from the surface and began slithering through the air like some sort of flying snake. He couldn't help but picture their faces when all the pony chefs were tripping over baby chicks, rolling around on oranges, all the while dodging the flames emitted by the psychotic-stove. Priceless.

While he was walking briskly through the castle, tearing banners down here and turning pillars into string cheese there, he came across a long forgotten music hall. The room was strange and alien to him, since it hadn't been around in his younger years. It must've run its course of usefulness entirely while he was imprisoned. The red satin seats have long since been tarnished, now resembling some sickening dark brown color. The stage, probably once host to some of Equestria's greatest musical minds, was now home only to spider webs and mice. Bats hung from the beautifully carved marble pillars, unaware of the fact that their bed was once a piece of fine art. Everything about the room loudly shouted the echoes of extravagance from ages ago.

He slowly walked up the aisles, taking in the ruin of the scene. He was slightly disappointed that there was nothing to destroy here, and for a brief moment, considered fixing it up so that he could wreck it his own way, but he quickly dashed the thought. "Anything I do would be an improvement at this point," he said out loud. Still, it was a shame that there was an entire hall that was basically untouchable. With slight agitation, he turned around back toward the door. When he got there, though, he realized the decrepit old room may have some minor use to it after all. Behind the door was an abandoned set of instruments: a cello, viola, and the two violins, to be exact. Covered in dust and cobwebs, the instruments barely looked playable. A full four string quartet, just begging to be woken up from their long hibernation for one last hurrah. It didn't take long for him to make up his mind.

When he kicked in the doors to the Canterlot Tower, the quartet was floating behind him, playing its final, dissonant, melody: a louder, more powerful rendition of Beethoofen's Ninth Symphpony. He snapped his fingers once again and created a carbon copy of himself. He looked at his self-made clone, bowed, and asked him "May I have this dance?" The clone nodded joyfully, and the two Discords began to waltz up to the vault where Celestia kept the Elements. As they danced up the middle of the hall, the two Discords snapped their fingers at each and every stained glass window, warping the great moments in Equestria's history to images of his own great victories. The window depicting his initial defeat was replaced by one of him corrupting Jupiter and Solara. His defeat at the hooves of Twilight Sparkle was instead one showing how he drove her and her friends so far apart. And perhaps the most slanderous one of all, the window showing him actively making ponies miserable, was altered to show how he killed his father to protect them.

When the chaotic duo finally reached the vault, the real Discord snapped his copy out of existence. There was but one thing left to do now. He turned his arm into Celestia's horn and inserted into the keyhole. The brilliant blue lights lit up like they always had, but this time, they bore a special, foreboding meaning. For him, this was it. He had finally won beyond a shadow of a doubt. He was about to seize the only things in the world that could possibly stop him, and he wouldn't be so foolish as to give anypony even a small chance again. No, this time there would be no unexpected comebacks. He had all the bases covered. When the door creaked open, he hastily pulled the Elements from their case and made for the throne room.

A few hours later, he found himself sitting on his horned throne looking out at all he had done. The main hall, kitchen, the tower and finally the throne room, had all fallen to his anarchy. Celestia's throne was cast out the window, the light blue tiles had been replaced by his gaudy purple checker board design, and the Elements of Harmony were nailed to the wall directly behind him, with second nails driven into the first nails for good measure. Finally. All the chaos and none of the imprisonment. "This is the life," he thought to himself, as he started to nod off to sleep in his throne.

Almost as quickly as he had closed them, his eyelids flew back open. Something was wrong with this whole thing. Nopony was around all night, nopony woke up during his rampage throughout the castle, and heck there wasn't even a guard on duty. No, no, no, no. Something was amiss. At this point, though, a trap was highly unlikely, because the sisters never would have let him get so far as to get the Elements. No, there was something else going on in Canterlot…that was more important than he was!

He darted his head back and forth to look for clues. Back and forth, back and forth, until he had stopped bothering to stop turning his head and his neck twisted around like it was made of taffy. With the elasticity of a rubber band, his head speedily spun back to its normal position, and when he regained his sense of sight from the dizziness, he could see a single pony urgently running past the door. Needless to say, Discord chased right after him.

When he finally arrived, Discord was fairly surprised to see hundreds of ponies clustered into one of smaller hallways. It had to be the entire population of Canterlot, and then some! Stallions, mares, fillies, they were reverently staring at a set of white and yellow double doors that lay on the opposite side of the hall. "Whatever is so important is just behind that door," Discord thought. He started making his way through the crowd. "Making his way through the crowd," of course meaning literally tossing ponies out of his way to create a path for himself. He had to ignore the ponies' gasps of horror as he moved deeper into the throng. When he got up to the door, he firmly grasped the diamond door-handle and indignantly proclaimed, "I don't know how much you ponies know about me, but last time I checked in, I'm kind of a big deal! So whatever is behind this door had better be pretty damn…" the doors swung open and he bit his tongue nearly in two. There, lying asleep in a beautiful canopy bed was Celestia. Her coat was gray, not with his magic, but with extreme age. Her mane had lost its flowing glory, and had returned to the pinkish color it had been when she was young, but it too, was tarnished and dull in color. Luna stood next to her bedside, weeping.

She was dying.


	12. Chapter 12

A Heart of Stone

**Chapter 12**

"I've had just about enough of this, you two," Discord said with a bit of fear in his voice before closing the double doors with his tail, shutting out the crowd amassed outside. There was no way she was dying. She couldn't be. He flew across the room to Celestia's bedside. "You've had your fun, now it's my turn! You won't take it away from me!" He started to shake her violently. "YOU ARE NOT DYING, TIA! WAKE UP!" Celestia stirred and inhaled. He knew it. She wasn't dying. Or so he thought. After she inhaled, she coughed a small mixture of blood and water up onto her before slipping back into unconsciousness.

Luna struggled to get him away from her sister. "Stop it!" she sobbed. "Stop it, you monster! Haven't you done enough to our family? Leave us alone!" Eventually, he backed away, allowing Luna to push him to the other end of the room. "You are the cause of every problem me and my sister have ever had! You killed our parents and stole our childhoods! Just get out of here!"

He directed his gaze at the marble floors, shook his head, and chuckled weakly. "Was she so ashamed that she couldn't even tell you on her deathbed?" He flung his head up to look Luna in the eyes. "You probably wouldn't have had ANY childhood if it weren't for me!" he bellowed. "Celestia wouldn't have loved you if it weren't for me! Everything you know and love would be a smoking heap of ash and smoke right now if it weren't for everything I did!" She stood there, stunned as he continued his tirade. "And one more thing…" he said with purpose before Luna stopped him.

"Discord. You're crying."

He spun around and looked into the vanity mirror. It was true. A set of tear streams were flowing from both of his eyes. He hadn't cried in so long he had forgotten what tears felt like. And how couldn't he cry? The only pony who ever understood him was going to die and not only was he not going to be able to say his final goodbyes to the unconscious mare, but he wasn't even going to be allowed in the room. He quickly wiped the tears from his face so as to not seem weak in front of Luna. "Fine," he said softly after a long silence. "You want me gone so bad, I'll go and never show my face in Equestria again. Before I do though, can I just have a word with her? Only for a moment."

"Why should I let you after all you've done?" she asked sternly.

"Because everybody can change. Surely, you of all ponies would know about that…" Luna blushed and stepped aside, clearing his path to Celestia's bed once more. He pushed the dully colored pink hair out of her face as the tears welt up within him again. "Tia," he said, "I don't know if you can hear me, but I just want to say that… I'm sorry. I know I've done some terrible, terrible things to you and your subjects and I'll never be able to fix them. I just wanted to make everypony as happy as I used to make you. Putting chaos above everything else was probably the worst decision of my entire life." By now, he wasn't making an effort to hide the tears. He only held out his claw so they didn't land on Celestia's unconscious body. He started to laugh hollowly. "You know it's funny. Every word I said last night was true. One hundred percent. I need you, Tia. My entire existence has been spent waiting for the next time I could see you. I know that I've been nasty to you, but I've never wanted to hurt you. I just…I don't know what I'm going to do without you. You were my foe, you were my foil," he leaned down and hugged her, "but you were my friend first."

With a heavy heart, he pulled himself away from her. He turned around to see Luna standing in the corner with a mixture of confusion and pity on her face. He sulked towards the door and snapped. "There. I cleaned up the mess I made on the way in here."

Luna seemed to have a change of heart. "Discord," she said kindly, "you can stay if you want."

"And have the _privilege_ of watching her die? No thank you, Luna. I think everyone would be better off if I just…" A weak voice echoed across the room.

"Please. Don't leave me, Dizzy."

He spun around faster than he had ever moved before. Celestia had woken up and propped herself up on her pillows. "Sister!" Luna cried. She hastened to her sister's side and nuzzled her neck. "You're alive!"

Celestia smiled. "Yes, Luna. But not for long, I'm afraid. There is a journal under my pillow," she whispered, "I want you to read it after I'm gone. It'll explain everything about Dizzy and I."

"I-I-I don't understand what you are saying, Tia," Luna said with a befuddled tone.

"Let's just put it this way: everything he said to you a few moments ago was true. For all that he's done, he's helped us both in more ways you could possibly know," she turned towards him, "and I thank him for it." She extended a beckoning hoof in his direction. He complied and walked across the room to her bedside.

He placed his hand on the back of his neck. "You heard all that, did you?"

She smiled at him and nodded, her lackluster mane bouncing up and down as she did so. "Yes, I did."

"I meant every word of it," he stated defensively.

"I know you did, Dizzy. I know you did." She looked slowly around her room, taking a great deal of time to absorb every last detail of it, as if she knew she was never going to see it again. "I need you to do something for me, Dizzy. A last wish, if you want to call it that."

Discord's eyes teared up again at the mention of the term _last _wish. "Anything, Tia. You just say the word and you have it."

She looked at him longingly, with more than a hint of nostalgia in her brilliant violet eyes. "I want you to bring me back. To the months we spent together all those years ago." He hesitatingly nodded and began to snap before Luna interjected.

"That's absurd!" she cried out, beginning to sob. She clearly wasn't too keen on the idea of her sister leaving her side. "Why don't you ask for something practical? He can do anything by thinking about it! He can make you live!" She whipped her head toward him. "Can't you?"

His head and heart sunk as he was reminded of one of his only limitations. "I can only create life so long as it's completely devoted to chaos." He turned back to Celestia. "And no matter what you say I will not do that to you."

She smiled. "I know you won't, Dizzy," she paused again to cough. "I just want to go back and see myself …no, ourselves, when we were the happiest. You can do that for me, can't you?"

He nodded slowly and purposefully. "For you, Tia? Anything."

Luna, with some more convincing from Discord, finally accepted her sister's final wish and said her last goodbyes. She once again nuzzled her neck. "I love you, big sister."

Celestia smiled and hugged her. "And I love you too Luna." At these words Luna broke into a full sob. Discord couldn't help but know how she was feeling. Celestia had been the focal point of her life as well as his own. She didn't know what she was going to do without her either. Celestia pulled her neck back to look at Luna one last time. "Dry those tears, little one. Be brave, Luna. Be brave for Equestria. Be brave for me." With these words of encouragement, Luna squeezed out the last of her tears and gave a quick nod to show that she accepted the last mission her sister gave her. Discord envied the tenderness he saw before him, but stifled the feeling as best he could.

She turned to him with a longing look in her eyes that said it all. "I'm ready. Let's go."

And with that, Discord lifted her off of her bed and carried her in his arms to the center of the room. Once there, he sat down on the marble floor, taking great care to make Celestia comfortable as she lay down across his. Then, just as it had years ago in the garden, the colors around them began to melt away. Soon there was only the familiar white plane and a pool of rainbow colored liquid left surrounding the now whitish-blue ethereal pair. The colors once again snaked through the plane, slowly recreating the garden.

Once the last patch of grass assimilated before them, Celestia turned her head to the sky and pointed her hoof upward. "Look, Dizzy. Any minute now, you'll be flying from just over there." Discord smiled faintly at her as he watched his past self fall from the sky and into the hedge maze below. Not five minutes later, an alabaster filly flew through a window and ran toward the maze. Celestia looked at herself, and then back at the filly. "Look at her. So young, so full of life. So beautiful," she said in despair.

Discord looked down at her. "And look at you. So wise, so loving." He paused. She looked up at him. "Nope. I don't see any change on the last one," he jested playfully. She smiled. Good. More than anything, he wanted to see her smile one last time.

When they looked back out at the garden it was the next day. It was late in the afternoon, dusk, to be exact. The filly was walking back into the garden, a draconequus riding the chocolate filled cotton candy cloud above her. They were laughing. "That was great!" cried the filly.

"Wasn't it just?" asked the young Discord. At the sound of his old voice, Discord's heart flooded with regret. "You stupid kid," he thought to himself. "You don't even know what you're going to do to yourself, do you? To her? Why didn't you tell her about your father sooner? Every minute she didn't know was a minute she was in danger. Didn't you care at all?" He hid his inner conflicts and looked down at Celestia. This was the happiest he had ever seen her.

The remainder of the three months played out in front of them like a moving slideshow. With each passing memory, Discord's heart grew heavier and heavier, while Celestia's smile grew smaller and smaller. They both knew what it was all leading up to, what was going to happen when the slideshow ended. But they didn't want to think about it. They sat there and looked, each mulling over a lifetime of loss, folly, regret, and love.

Finally, the green and warm backdrop of the garden melted away to one that was cold, dark, and grey: the mountainside cave they stayed in the night Discord told her about his mother. This was it. The very last peaceful moment they had spent together.

As young Discord talked about his parentage, Celestia looked up at him again. "Dizzy?"

"Yes, Tia?" he responded.

"It's almost time. I can feel it," she muttered softly.

"Don't talk like that, Tia," he said, the tears starting to come from his eyes again.

"But it's true," she said, matter-of-factly. "And regardless of how I might have sounded when I was talking to Luna," she paused to cough again. Discord could feel the blood and water mixture hit the scales on his leg. "I'm scared, Dizzy."

The tears rolled down his face freely, and once again, he put out his paw to catch them before they hit her. "Don't be," he said, somehow remaining some semblance of composure. "I'm sure whatever comes after this is far better."

"I'm not just scared for me. I'm scared for you too." He was surprised to say the least. "What will you do without me, Dizzy? You said it yourself. Without harmony there can be no-"

"I know what I said. And don't you worry about me. I know I'll get through. Somehow…"

She coughed again, this time with no blood mixture. "Yes, won't be long now," she said softer than she had ever spoken before. She was clearly fading and fast. "Dizzy, come closer." He obliged, and raised her head closer to his with his paw. "I wish we just had more time," she said bluntly. "Besides Luna, I had no one else. Students and ponies would come and go, and I just learned to adjust. You were friend I was ever really torn up to have lost. Even when I was at my most angry with you, when you were at your worst, I couldn't bear to you to Tartarus. Because I knew you were still the Dizzy I knew and loved."

Discord's eyes widened. "Loved?" he said out loud.

She winced, as though she just realized she made some awful slipup, but then exhaled deeply. "Yes, Dizzy. I love you."

The world stopped then and there. All thoughts of Celestia dying and his bleak future left his mind. He couldn't remember the last time he had heard somepony say that to him, if they'd ever said it at all. He raised her head even closer to his and kissed her on the forehead. "I love you too, Tia."

A few moments after he had put her back down to rest on his lap, he felt her go limp. He refused to look even for a second. Instead, he closed his eyes, brought her body up close to him, hugged it and cried to himself. The last things he heard from the young filly and draconequus before he passed out on the cliff floor were chilling:

"Dizzy?"

"Yes, Tia?"

"Will we be friends forever?"

"Sure we will, Tia. Sure we will."


	13. Chapter 13

A Heart of Stone

**Epilogue**

He woke up in the present, still on the cliffside. The air around him was thick with the darkness of the night sky, despite it being fairly late in the morning. He heard a dim murmur coming from the city below him. He peered over the edge of the cliff to see what was going on. All throughout Canterlot, perhaps throughout all of Equestria, ponies gathered together, huddling close for comfort. Each and everypony was holding a single candle in hoof. The sheer number of them lit the streets of Canterlot in the darkness: Equestrians were grieving for their princess.

As soon as he saw the funeral procession below for what it was, he recoiled slowly. He turned his gaze back to the darkened mass lying on the cold stony floor. He crawled on all fours over to it, took it into his arms, and wept. He wept for his youthful stupidity. He wept for his ancient mistakes. He wept for his now meaningless future. And above all, he wept for _her_. He wept and wept until he was out of tears to weep.

Several hours later, when he finally regained something vaguely resembling composure, he gently placed the limp corpse back onto the ground. Her violet eyes were closed now, never again to brighten the day of anypony who saw them. Her mane was now rustled and dull, both far cries from its former flowing glory. Yet her beauty and majesty persisted, even in death. As he continued to hear the chants and cries rising from Canterlot, he knew that he wanted to…needed to give one last tribute to his friend.

He walked over to the edge and snapped his fingers. Almost immediately, the moon set and her sun flew to the center of the sky. He turned his head toward the top half of the mountain. He snapped with his other hand, and the entirety of the peak, right up to a few feet above the cliff he stood upon, burst into a huge cloud of stone dust. When the dust settled, quite the transformation had occurred. Where there had once been moss and twig, there was now hooves and a tail. Where there had once been rock and mud, there was now a mane and a crown. Where there had once been a cold, unforgiving mountain peak, there was now a colossal stone statue of a benevolent, loving alicorn, eternally watching over her subjects.

His attention turned to Celestia's body. He could not and would not use the chaotic magic that drove them apart to bury her. No. It would be a labor of love. He conjured up a heavy shovel and began digging right there on the cliff. It was hard work. Harder work than anything he had done in a long time. Crutching on magic for so long would do that he guessed. But after a while, he had created a grave of sufficient size. For lack of a better option, he did have to conjure a coffin, but never before had a more beautiful coffin been made. It was made out of solid and was laden with jewels along each of its sides. Along the cover were images of Celestia's life. From the days in the garden, to their first battle, to banishing her sister, to challenging the changeling queen, they were all there. "A fulfilled life," Discord thought. What did he ever do with his life? Cement himself as a loathed figure in Equestrian history? Be used as a tyrant's secret weapon? Alienate one of the only ponies who ever cared for him?

He lowered her into the coffin's velvety interior before lowering it into the dirt. He slowly refilled the hole as the sun beat down upon his back. After the mound had been filled, the only thing left missing was a tombstone. He walked over to the stone wall of the mountain and clawed at it with his talons, eventually managing to carve out a headstone sized slab. He took the hunk of rock into his arms, and began carving with his claws. When he stuck the thing into the ground at the head of the grave, it read:

_Here lies a ruler, a sister, and a dear friend. _

_Rest In Peace, Princess Celestia of Equestria._

"_Will you miss me Celestia? I'll miss you."_

When he was finally finished, he sat down, stared at the grave, and waited. He waited for a long time, but nothing happened. Every fiber in his being wanted him to stay there until the day he died. The only thing was, he didn't know if he _was_ so blessed with mortality. And even if he was, all that time in stone interfered with his physical growth and ageing. He was barely a day older than he was when he was first imprisoned. Death, if it was coming for him at all, was still a long way off.

With a heavy heart, he decided that he couldn't stay in Equestria. Without a purpose, without harmony, without her, life would be unbearable. The books he read growing up had always talked about the mysterious places beyond Equestria. The areas nothing, pony or otherwise, dared to travel. That's where he would go to spend the remainder of his days.

As he had done before, he clutched the air near to him, and pulled on it, opening a tear in his reality. On the other side of the portal was a swirling conflagration of purple and green light. He hadn't a clue where it would take him exactly, nor did he care. Maybe there would be nothing else there. Maybe there would be other beings. Maybe they could learn from his mistakes. Maybe they couldn't. All he knew was that there was nothing left for him in Equestria.

He stepped into the portal one leg at a time. He eased the rest of himself into it slowly, and quickly turned around to get one last look at the grave before he closed it up for good. At first he thought his eyes were deceiving him, but he soon realized that he was sure in what he was seeing. Floating behind the tombstone was a mass of swirling white and yellow light. It stayed in place, stagnant, for several seconds, before reaching down to the ground. The ball of light sluggishly rose up from the ground, recreating a ghostly pony piece by piece. When it was over, Celestia's spirit stood before him.

He stood there, in the space between spaces, dumfounded. They looked at each other for a long time. Then she smiled a smile which said it all. "Thank you, Dizzy. And don't you worry about me. I'll be fine. We'll see each other again someday." And as quickly as she had appeared, Celestia's ghost unfurled her wings and flew off into the now setting sun.

_**The End**_

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